Chang issues warning after Chinese drone shot down over Taiwan Strait: 'Anything can happen right now'
Gatestone Institute Senior Fellow Gordon Chang joined 'Fox & Friends First' to discuss concerns surrounding heightened tension between China and Taiwan and what signals the beginning of the next global war.
Russia attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24. Now, six months later, Ukraine is launching a large-scale counter offensive to drive the Russian invaders off the west bank of the Dnieper River and retake the major city of Kherson.
Some 5,000 miles to the east, the People’s Republic of China continues to press Taiwan. On Tuesday, China flew a reconnaissance drone near a Taiwanese-held island. Taiwan fired warning shots at it and warned that further intrusions would be met with force. Two days later, Taiwan shot down a Chinese drone in what is the first hostile fire from Taiwan since 1958.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, noted that, "What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight — it’s the size of the fight in the dog."
CHINA HAS REPEATEDLY SIMULATED ATTACKS ON US WARSHIPS, TAIWAN WARNS
From the start of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine showed that it had the fighting spirit it needed to survive Moscow’s attempted blitz to overrun its territory and overthrow its government. But tenaciously holding onto your homeland and organizing an effective offensive are two very different tasks. The latter requires supplies, mechanized equipment, and large volumes of accurate artillery and missile fire.
Taiwan staged military exercises to show its ability to resist Chinese pressure to accept Beijing's political control over the island. (AP Photo/Johnson Lai) (AP Photo)
The jury is out on how well the Ukrainians will do against a Russian foe that is now low on morale and poorly supplied due to Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s logistics train. Russians are not likely able to respond in the way in which they are accustomed — with generously supplied massed artillery. Russia may be looking at a sharp defeat that could change the calculus for a negotiated cease fire.
Russia’s ongoing difficulties in Ukraine are being very closely watched in Beijing where General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping has ratcheted up tensions across the Taiwan Strait. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the self-ruled democratic island of Taiwan on Aug. 2 merely delivered a pretext to Xi to do what he was going to do anyway: use China’s new military hardware to cow Taiwan — and those nations that might come to Taiwan’s aid should China invade.
Taiwan’s importance cannot be overstated. It’s the lynchpin of the Pacific’s first island chain. Seizing Taiwan would provide China with deep-water access to the Pacific, allowing it to threaten key trade routes serving Japan and South Korea. It would also allow China to threaten Japan more readily to the north and the Philippines to the south. And things have changed since the decades when the former Chinese Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, and his successors ruled Taiwan. Since 2000, Taiwan has seen three peaceful transfers of power between opposing parties. Taiwan’s democracy threatens the very credibility of the Chinese Communist Party’s one-party dictatorship. And Taiwan manufactures 90% of the world’s advanced computer chips.
Since Pelosi’s delegation visited Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, China has significantly increased its air and naval activities around the island. Prior to the visit, China would sortie one to a dozen aircraft to within about 100 miles of the southern tip of the island three to four times a week. Larger flights of more than two dozen fighters, bombers, and intelligence aircraft were flown every two to three months. Now those larger sorties are an almost daily occurrence and are also flown across the breadth of the Taiwan Strait, which narrows to 90 miles from China at its closest distance.
We know what China has done since Pelosi’s visit, but we don’t know leader Xi’s intentions. How might the lessons from Russia’s Ukraine misadventure be viewed in Zhongnanhai, the former Chinese imperial garden that serves as the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party?
China has had much success over more than a decade in its unopposed effort to militarize rocks and atolls in the South China Sea. Picking up speed during President Barack Obama’s term, China dredged, fortified, and built runways on dozens of outcroppings hundreds of miles from Chinese territory. China muscled its way into waters claimed by its weaker neighbors — the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Brunei. The Philippines even brought suit against China in the international court at The Hague which ruled that China's made up "Nine-Dash Line" claim to vast swaths of the South China Sea was not legally binding. China ignored it — the court at The Hague has neither a navy nor an army.
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By its past behavior and success in the South China Sea, it might seem that China would simply ramp up the pressure on Taiwan, gradually but effectively blockading the island over time, cutting it off from trade and forcing the island to surrender. But, while China was busy grabbing a bunch of rocks in the ocean, it expected adjacent nations to be frightened into Beijing’s orbit—instead, China squandered goodwill and earned a deepening enmity from the nations it sought to pressure. Thus, an attempt to slowly muscle in on Taiwan would merely accelerate Japan’s rearmament, among other consequences.
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Instead, China might seek military conquest of Taiwan. If it does, Russia’s experience in Ukraine suggests three things. First, invade with overwhelming force — do not hope for a quick capitulation only to be stuck in bloody stalemate. Second, achieve information dominance — do not allow Taiwan to tell its story to the world. Third, expect that Taiwan will have friends — attack American and Japanese forces in the region that might interfere with an invasion.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration continues with what appears to be a single-minded focus on Russia, while tension in the Pacific heats up to the boiling point.
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