In recent days, China has created a situation of fundamental uncertainty for the United States regarding its military intentions in the Taiwan issue.
As promised in Beijing, the provocative visit of the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the US Congress to the island of Taiwan had serious consequences. The fact that the PRC allowed Pelosi to be on the island does not change anything.
Beijing does not trade for spectacular effects. The first thing China achieved was the tacit agreement of the US and Taiwan to the permanent presence of the PLA in close proximity in the waters around the island and to openly practice a military reunification operation. The lukewarm response from the White House to the PLA exercises around Taiwan shows that Washington is forced to come to terms with what it previously considered unacceptable. As China’s military superiority over US forces in the area builds, America will have to get used to the inevitable.
China’s response to the American provocation consists of military and non-military parts. Now in plain sight are the unprecedented geographical scope and multifaceted nature of the PLA exercises around Taiwan. According to the general opinion of Chinese military experts, an operation is being worked out to forcefully reunite the island with mainland China.
The PLA’s exercises include attacking sea targets, strikes against land targets, airspace control operations, live firing with precision-guided munitions of various branches of the military. The exercise is led by the command of the Eastern Theater of Operations of the PLA.
The PLA Navy conducts combat patrols in the Taiwan Strait, the northern part of the island, as well as in the waters to the east of the island. Naval aircraft patrol the Taiwan Strait and northern Taiwan airspace. Strategic and front-line aviation carry out all-weather and multidirectional suppression of the resistance of a potential enemy around the island.
The exercises use the latest generation of equipment and weapons, including J-20 stealth fighters, H-6K bombers, Type 052D destroyer, DF-11 short-range ballistic missiles and DF-17 hypersonic missiles.
The PLA forces for the first time entered the 12-mile sea zone of the island, effectively abolishing the so-called midline in the Taiwan Strait. Surrounding Taiwan, the PLA completely blockaded the island for the first time.
According to Herman Shuai, a retired Taiwanese lieutenant general, the exercise of blocking the island appears to be one of the plans to forcibly reunite Taiwan with mainland China.
Chinese analysts believe the PRC avoided an incident that could have triggered a world war and used Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan as a chance to push for reunification, starting with drills to blockade the island.
There is also a non-military component to Beijing’s reaction. The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced eight countermeasures, which include the cancellation of Sino-US contacts in areas of importance to the United States.
Contacts in the military sphere have been suspended: along the line of commanders of adjacent groupings of troops in the western part of the Pacific Ocean; Defense Policy Coordination (DPCT); through the Sino-US Naval Consultative Agreement (MMCA) meetings.
Bilateral cooperation on the repatriation of illegal immigrants has also been suspended; in the field of legal assistance in criminal cases; to combat transnational crime; drug control; on climate change.
China has created a situation of fundamental uncertainty for the United States regarding its military intentions in the Taiwan issue. For Washington, in military contacts with the PRC, the situation is the same as in the early days of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, when the head of the Pentagon cut off the phone in the hope of contacting his Russian counterpart S. Shoigu.
The visit to Taiwan by a third person in the US administration was just another, albeit the most scandalous, moment in Washington’s attempts to break the status quo on the Taiwan issue, but this moment will turn out to be a turning point in China-US relations. The “U.S. commitment to Taiwan” that Pelosi spoke of on the island has become irresolvably at odds with the U.S. commitment to China.
Let us note the opinion of Ding Gang, senior editor of the Chinese edition of People’s Daily (the English version of the official daily publication of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China “People’s Daily”), according to which the Pelosi incident showed that the comprehensive American containment of China “has entered the stage of full implementation.” China is identified as America’s enemy “number one”; now, in many important areas, Washington no longer leaves room for “China’s development or for strategic coordination between the two sides.”
Until now, China’s offensive strategy policy of the United States has been defensive in nature, according to the formula “if you strike, I strike back or sometimes I don’t even resist, I just evade”: China has previously tried to ease tensions in the US-China relations.
Ding Gang draws attention to the fundamental premise of American aggressiveness towards China: this country, in the process of rapid development, began to change absolutely not in the way that was expected in Washington. With the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, which has become the second largest economy in the world, the political model and ideological attitudes of the PRC remain original. The focus of mainland China on “peaceful reunification of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait” has not changed, in which the military option is considered as an extreme case. However, Washington’s strategy has changed: in the “deterrence plus engagement” formula, there is more and more “deterrence” and less and less “cooperation.” US aggression towards China is spreading from top to bottom, in all directions, at all levels.
Washington is shrinking for itself the space for choosing optimal solutions. And if the US strategy is to push China into the position of “enemy number one”, the result will be China going on active defense, and “defending against US offensive provocations will turn into a strategic counterattack.”
Viktor Pirozhenko, FSK
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