China has a range of tactics it might adopt, military experts say. They all carry risk for President Xi Jinping and his ruling Communist Party. They also pose different challenges for Taiwan and for the United States and its allies, principally Japan. Xi’s options include seizing Taiwan’s outlying islands, blockades or all-out invasion. Some Taiwanese military experts say Beijing's next step might be to seize the lightly defended and remote Pratas Islands in the north of the South China Sea. Any of these moves could spin out of control into war between China and America over Taiwan.
This report examines some of the conflict scenarios. It is based on interviews with close to a dozen military strategists and 15 current and former military officers from Taiwan, the United States, Australia and Japan. Some serving officers spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. The report also draws on articles in U.S., Chinese and Taiwanese military and professional journals and official publications. In places, we have provided links to published articles and documents that shed light on Chinese, Taiwanese and U.S. thinking.
These scenarios are, by their very nature, speculative. They are not predictions by Reuters of events to come. There is no certainty that real conflict would follow any of these trajectories. And hostilities may not erupt at all. But with tensions high, accident or miscalculation could become a catalyst for clashes at any time.
“For all sides the stakes are enormous,” said Ian Easton, a senior director of the Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, Virginia, and author of “The Chinese Invasion Threat,” a 2017 book which lays out the challenges the PLA faces in mounting an invasion and how Taiwan might respond. “A life and death game is underway, and none of the players have any way of knowing how it will end.”
A China foreign ministry spokesperson said the ministry would not comment on “hypothetical reports.” But the spokesperson added that the ruling party in Taiwan and ‘“Taiwan independence’ elements, in collusion with external forces, are constantly engaging in provocations by seeking ‘independence,’ which is the root cause of the current tense and turbulent situation in the Taiwan Strait.”
Today, under Xi Jinping, China is flashing impatience with Taiwan’s unwillingness to submit to Beijing’s rule. Xi says China’s aim is peaceful unification, but has pointedly refused to rule out the use of force.
Chinese control of Taiwan would dramatically reinforce the Communist Party’s prestige at home and eliminate the island as a viable model of a democratic alternative to authoritarian Party rule. It would also give China a foothold in the so-called first island chain, the line which runs through the string of islands from the Japanese archipelago to Taiwan, the Philippines and Borneo, which enclose China’s coastal seas.
For Beijing, success would translate into a commanding strategic position in Asia, undermining the security of Japan and South Korea, and allowing China to project power into the Western Pacific. But Beijing also has an incentive to be cautious: If America and its allies intervened against a takeover attempt, they could inflict heavy losses on an untested Chinese military that has not fired a shot in anger for decades. Defeat could weaken the Party’s hold on power.
