A CH-47 ahead of Taiwan National Day celebrations, in Taipei, on Sept. 29.ANN WANG/Reuters
Is Beijing preparing for war with Taiwan, a self-governed island that lies about 160 km off the southeast coast of China?
China’s President Xi Jinping, who recently managed to secure a precedent-breaking third term as head of the authoritarian state, said in October his country would not renounce the use of force to annex Taiwan.
The Chinese government considers Taiwan a breakaway province even though the Chinese Communist Party has never ruled the island since taking power on the mainland in 1949. It bristles against what it considers foreign interference in the matter and has reserved the right to use force to annex Taiwan, where Nationalist forces fled after they lost a civil war to the Communists.
Tensions flared this summer after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi flew to Taiwan, the highest-ranking American politician to visit in a quarter century.
China responded by staging live-fire military exercises and encircled the island with warships in what Taiwan’s leaders said was a dry-run for a blockade and invasion. China fired ballistic missiles over Taiwan during the episode.
Last year, U.S. Admiral Philip Davidson, then-head of Indo-Pacific Command, informed a Senate committee that China will have acquired the capacity to take Taiwan by force by 2027.
Others think the invasion could come faster. The former naval commander of Japan’s Maritime Self Defence Force told the Globe and Mail recently that China is likely to invade Taiwan within five years unless Canada and other Western allies band together to send tough economic and military warnings to Beijing.
The Globe and Mail’s Steven Chase spent close to a month reporting on Taiwan and the uncertain future facing the island of 24 million people.
What’s the history behind the Taiwan-China conflict?
People walk past a billboard welcoming U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in Taipei, on Aug. 3.Chiang Ying-ying/The Associated Press
The governments in Beijing and Taipei are each products of a civil war that made China a Communist country in 1949, and their animosity is, in a sense, a continuation of that war. For seven decades, the two governments have been in a standoff.
Taiwan is a self-ruled island with its own military and foreign policy, which the Communist Party-run People’s Republic of China claims as part of its territory. The 36,000 sq. km island, slightly larger than Belgium, is where defeated Chinese Nationalist forces retreated in 1949 after they lost a civil war on China’s mainland to Mao Zedong’s Communists.
The Kuomintang, led by the autocratic Chiang Kai-shek – regrouped on the island of Taiwan and declared themselves to be the legitimate government of all China. Now a democracy, Taiwan still officially calls itself “Republic of China,” or ROC, to stand apart from the Communist-run PRC, or “People’s Republic of China.”
The Chinese Communist Party, which transformed China into a socialist state 73 years ago, has never ruled Taiwan.
Taiwan, in turn, has survived, thanks to the protection of the United States.
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Will China invade Taiwan?
Artillery flares are fired in the sky during a live-fire drill in Pingtung, Taiwan, on Aug. 9.Rai/Getty Images
For decades, Taiwan has lived under the threat of invasion from China. Mr. Xi has vowed Taiwan will one day be brought under Beijing’s control and China has not ruled out the use of force.
U.S. military and intelligence experts expect China to have the capability to invade Taiwan by 2027. But Russia’s attempt to subdue neighbouring Ukraine in 2022 has made the threat loom larger.
China has not flown military aircraft into Taiwan’s airspace – above the island and extending 12 nautical miles out from the coastline – but its drones have patrolled above Kinmen Island, an outlying Taiwanese possession near the mainland.
Chinese military aircraft have increasingly crossed the median line in what Taiwan calls escalating harassment: that’s the midpoint in the waterway between Taiwan and China, which Taipei says was previously tacitly accepted by Beijing as an unofficial buffer.
Ou Si-fu, a director at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, or INDSR, said a full-scale Chinese invasion could very well start like China’s August military drills. In a war, PLA warships and planes encircling the island would first enforce a blockade designed to starve Taiwan of energy and food.
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Why does China want Taiwan?
Flags at Taiwan's National Day celebrations in Taoyuan, Taiwan.LAM YIK FEI/The New York Times News Service
China considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province and the ruling Chinese Communist Party frames annexing Taiwan as recovering something that was stolen from it.
In reality, however, there are major geopolitical reasons for Beijing to covet Taiwan. It’s a pivotal location in what is called the first island chain off the Asian mainland and what China regards as a strategic location for controlling the region.
Taiwanese government officials contend that what Beijing really wants, according to the Taiwan legislator, is to displace the U.S. military’s dominance in the western Pacific.
U.S. general Douglas MacArthur, decades ago, described Taiwan’s geostrategic importance as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, and Taiwanese officials say China needs the island to project its power across the Pacific.
China has been steadily shifting the balance of power in the region by building up its air force and navy and militarizing the South and East China seas.
Many Taiwanese, however, no longer consider themselves Chinese. For 11 years, from 1884 to 1895, China and the western third of Taiwan were both part of the Manchu empire. But China’s Qing Dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan after losing a war in 1895 and Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule for 50 years until 1945 when Japan surrendered at the end of the Second World War.
Taiwan came under brief control of China’s Nationalist government but this was lost in 1949 when Mao’s Communists took over China and Chiang’s forces retreated to Taiwan.
Polls in Taiwan suggest few Taiwanese want to join China. An April, 2022, poll by the independent and non-partisan Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation found 80.1 per cent of respondents identify solely as Taiwanese. Another 10.2 per cent see themselves as both Taiwanese and Chinese. Only 5.3 per cent view themselves as solely Chinese.
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What is Taiwan doing to prepare for a Chinese invasion?
Armoured vehicles move into position during a live-fire military exercise in Pingtung, Taiwan, on Sept. 7.ANN WANG/Reuters
Taiwan is engaged in a race against time, acquiring new jet fighters and new battle tanks over the next few years, as well as domestically built submarines to harass the Chinese military at choke points at the north and south of the island.
The Asian territory is building a backup satellite internet system so it can communicate with the world, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has done, if the worst-case scenario unfolds. Taiwan says it needs to be able to talk to global leaders, and its own people, in real time. “As we’ve seen from the Ukrainian experience, real-time video conference is really important,” Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s new Minister of Digital Affairs, said.
Among other measures, the Taiwanese government has set up a pilot project that would create the capability to communicate in high-quality video in case China cuts its undersea internet cables and knocks out its mobile networks. This “proof of concept” program will test satellite internet connections and 700 locations in Taiwan will be outfitted with equipment to communicate. Taiwan has about 15 undersea cables connecting it to the world and which transmit digital communications such as phone calls and e-mail.
Taiwan is bolstering its reserve forces and there are private sector efforts to train civilians to resist an invasion. Taiwanese tycoon Robert Tsao, known for founding microchip maker United Microelectronics Corp. and collecting art, is spending three billion Taiwanese dollars ($130-million) of his own money to help train civilians to defend themselves. Money will be used to train three million Taiwanese civilians on how to cope with an invasion. It’s also underwriting an effort to teach 300,000 Taiwanese shooting skills and kick-start domestic production of combat drones.
Taiwan also looks to the “silicon shield” – the Asian territory’s indispensable role in making cutting-edge microchips – to help deter a full-scale attack by Beijing. About 90 per cent of the world’s advanced semiconductor manufacturing capacity is located in Taiwan. Both China and the West rely heavily on Taiwan for these fingernail-sized chips, found at the heart of modern technology from smartphones to cars to medical devices. This affords Taiwan protection from attack, Taipei hopes, because China can’t risk destroying advanced semiconductor production – and the West can’t allow it.
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What does Xi Jinping’s third term mean for Taiwan?
Chinese President Xi Jinping waves during an event at the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing, on Oct. 23.Andy Wong/The Associated Press
Mr. Xi could alter China’s approach to Taiwan now.
Harry Tseng, previously deputy minister of Taiwan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, said political analysts in Taiwan think Mr. Xi will use his third term to try to force Taiwan to come to the bargaining table. “The security concerns in my part of the world, that will become a major part of my job.”
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Where does Canada fall in terms of support? What is Canada’s policy on Taiwan?
A Chinese flag is illuminated by sunshine in the Hall of Honour, in Ottawa, on Sept. 22, 2016.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu says a trade deal with Canada is among the top ways Ottawa could help the self-governing island as China ramps up efforts to isolate the territory and bring it under Beijing’s control.
Canada promised to begin exploratory talks on an investor protection deal with Taiwan in January, but the federal government can’t yet say whether Ottawa is prepared to negotiate. At issue is a foreign investment promotion and protection agreement, or FIPA, that could stimulate two-way trade by enshrining legal protections for Canadian investors in Taiwan as well as Taiwanese investors in Canada.
In October, Ottawa sent a delegation of five Canadian MPs to Taiwan amid China’s escalating military threats. The Chinese government condemned the visit, saying it “grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs”.
Canada has not recognized Taiwan as a sovereign state since 1970 when former prime minister Pierre Trudeau switched diplomatic relations to the Communist-led People’s Republic of China on the mainland. And while China considers Taiwan part of its territory, Canada has never officially expressed support for this. In a 1970 communiqué on the establishment of diplomatic relations, Canada did not endorse Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is an “inalienable part” of China; it merely said it “takes note of this position.”
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What does Taiwan mean for U.S.-China relations?
Mr. Xi shakes hands with U.S. President Joe Biden before their meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit.Alex Brandon/The Associated Press
On Monday, Mr. Xi and U.S. President Joe Biden met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali – the first time the two men have seen each other in-person since Mr. Biden was elected in 2020. Taiwan was a top agenda item of the meeting, and remains the biggest sticking point for the U.S.-China relationship.
Biden objected to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions” toward Taiwan and raised human rights concerns about Beijing’s conduct in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong during his first in-person meeting on Monday with Mr. Xi, the White House said.
The United States has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity” regarding Taiwan that does not make clear how it would respond to a military assault of the island. But that appears to have shifted under Mr. Biden, who has three times now said Washington would come to the military aid of Taipei.
Asked in September whether U.S. forces “would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion,” Mr. Biden said, “Yes.”
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With reports from James Griffiths, Robert Fife and The Associated Press.
Steven Chase