As many much wiser and more experienced people than I will tell you, the two most complex and dangerous operations in war are:
1. An airborne assault ~ against anything, it gets worse if there are air defences; and
2. An amphibious landing, especially against a defended locality.
The only ways to invade Taiwan are by air and/or sea. Taiwan is not a weakling. It is modern air defences and it plans and trains to meet and defeat an amphibious assault.
I was impressed, ten to 30 years ago when I used to visit China on a fairly regular basis, on how much the People's Liberation Army (Navy and Army) seemed to be improving in professionalism but there is a nagging question: can you buy skill? The PLA has a lot of shiny new equipment and it is, now, a large professional force but I still wonder if it is ready and able to undertake either, much less both of the two most complex operations in war.
Which is why the Chinese prefer an indirect approach, IIRC:
Why China-Taiwan Relations Are So Tense
How has China tried to intimidate Taiwan?
China has employed a variety of coercive tactics short of armed conflict, and it has ramped up these measures since Tsai’s election in 2016. Its objective is to wear down Taiwan and prompt the island’s people to conclude that their best option is unification with the mainland. To that end, China has increased the frequency and scale of patrols of PLA bombers, fighter jets, and surveillance aircraft over and around Taiwan. It has also increasingly sails its warships and aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait in shows of force.
Taiwan has reported that thousands of cyberattacks from China target its government agencies every day. These attacks have
soared in recent years. In 2020, Taipei accused four Chinese groups of hacking into at least
ten Taiwanese government agencies and six thousand official email accounts since 2018 to try to access government data and personal information.
Beijing has also used nonmilitary measures to pressure Taiwan. In 2016, China suspended a cross-strait communication mechanism with the main Taiwan liaison office. It restricted tourism to Taiwan, and the number of mainland tourists visiting Taiwan has fallen from a high of over 4 million in 2015 to 2.7 million in 2019. China has also pressured global corporations, including airlines and hotel chains, to list Taiwan as a Chinese province.
Has Beijing undermined Taiwan’s democracy?
In addition to the tactics described above, China has
ramped up interference in Taiwan’s elections. Its methods include spreading disinformation on social media and increasing its control over Taiwanese media outlets. In the 2020 election, for example, China spread disinformation in an apparent effort to damage Tsai and boost the KMT’s presidential candidate. Such efforts are part of China’s larger strategy of employing coercion to erode trust in Taiwan’s political system and sow divisions in Taiwanese society. However, experts view the DPP’s success in recent elections, including
Tsai’s reelection in 2020, as a rebuke of Beijing.
Taiwan’s democracy is relatively young. The KMT governed under martial law from 1949 to 1987. During that time, political dissent was harshly repressed and Taiwanese who had long inhabited the island before 1945 faced discrimination. Taiwan held its first free legislative elections in 1992 and its first presidential elections in 1996. Since then, it has peacefully transferred power between parties several times.
Despite Chinese threats, Taiwan appears to have so far bucked the trend of backsliding afflicting democracies around the world. In 2020, the
Economist’s
Democracy Index [PDF] labeled Taiwan a “full democracy” for the first time and ranked it eleventh-most democratic overall, up from thirty-first the previous year. That is higher than its Asian neighbors (Japan ranked twenty-first and South Korea ranked twenty-third) and the United States, which ranked twenty-fifth. Recent elections have seen high voter turnout.
Taiwan has the potential to be a flash point in U.S.-China relations. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taipei in 2022 heightened tensions.
www.cfr.org
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