This article was originally published on the National Review.
There is a real danger that Chinese Communist Party chief Xi will essentially ‘Ukrainize’ Taiwan. The international community must guard against it.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed Taiwan to the forefront of geopolitics once again. The U.S. and Europe fear that Communist China will take the opportunity to attack Taiwan by force, while leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait insist that Taiwan cannot be compared to Ukraine. Beijing asserts that Taiwan is an internal Chinese matter and that linking it to Ukraine is a Western-created conspiracy about “democracy against dictatorship,” while Taipei emphasizes that it is fundamentally different from Ukraine in terms of its geostrategic and global supply-chain importance. We believe there is a real danger that Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping will essentially “Ukrainize” Taiwan, and the international community must guard against it.
Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on the grounds of protecting Russians who were subjected to so-called “genocide” in Ukraine, NATO’s expansion to the east, and the need to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine. These justifications are untenable excuses for aggression against Ukraine. Russia’s aggression is in essence a blatant abandonment of the principle of the prohibition of the use of force to resolve international disputes among nation-states, as stipulated in the U.N. Charter, and it is a crime according to the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court.
Xi Jinping is an accomplice to Putin’s war of aggression and the mastermind in undermining the existing liberal world order. Xi has greatly increased his military intimidation of Taiwan since coming to power. On the same day that Putin invaded Ukraine, nine Chinese military planes violated Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone. This was definitely not a coincidence, but a provocation orchestrated in tandem with Russia.
Judging from Xi’s behavior since coming to power, we believe that regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Xi will not change his mind about an armed attack on Taiwan, and it is only a matter of time before he moves against Taiwan. The chances of Xi launching a military operation to invade Taiwan in the latter part of his third term are relatively high. This is because Xi has vowed to annex Taiwan as the CCP’s “historic mission and an unshakable commitment,” and has already ordered his military to accelerate war preparation by achieving the People’s Liberation Army’s centenary goal of “liberating Taiwan” by 2027.
For the CCP, regime security is at the epicenter of its core interests, and if an attack on Taiwan would lead to the collapse and change of its own regime, the CCP would certainly think twice before doing so. Therefore, the most effective means of preventing the Ukrainization of Taiwan is to create a new dynamic: A potential CCP invasion in the Taiwan Strait would need to directly threaten the security of the CCP regime. This requires, first and foremost, that the United States and the West be firm and clear in their resolve to defend Taiwan. Putin’s boldness to invade Ukraine is mainly attributable to the weak will of Europe and the U.S. to defend the country; the invasion was seen to carry acceptable risks.
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