Chun Han Wong
After Taiwan’s president traveled through the U.S. this spring, China responded with three days of live-fire military drills and a barrage of condemnations asserting its claims to the self-governing island.
Now, with Taiwan’s vice president, Lai Ching-te, touching down in New York on Saturday night, China’s leaders have more to think about as they weigh a response.
Beijing repeatedly warned the U.S. against allowing Lai to stop in the U.S. on his way to and from Paraguay, denouncing the route as provocative. China’s military stepped up sorties into the airspace and waters near Taiwan in the days leading up to Lai’s trip, and its state broadcaster released a documentary that featured soldiers expressing a willingness to die in an attack on the island.
Yet Beijing could limit its response for a range of reasons, according to Taiwanese officials and political analysts.
One is fear of upsetting a delicate effort to ease tensions with Washington. Another is the potential effect on Taiwan’s presidential election in January. Lai is the current front-runner in the race and a provocative action could boost his popularity among Taiwanese voters who increasingly resent perceived bullying by mainland China.
“Any maneuvering by Beijing, based on past experiences in the last few years, may just help Lai to score points,” said a senior Taiwanese official, referring to past elections in which aggressive Chinese action boosted the ruling party’s candidate. “This holds no benefits for Beijing.”
Lai’s transit comes as Washington and Beijing try to ease tension with tentative efforts to manage friction over Taiwan, the war in Ukraine, espionage and technology controls. For Beijing, easing tensions with Washington would help reduce external pressures weighing on China’s sluggish economy, though Chinese officials have also stressed to American counterparts that they won’t compromise on their core interests—including the goal of unifying Taiwan with the mainland.
Lai is scheduled to depart for Paraguay on Sunday evening as part of a seven-day trip to attend the inauguration of Paraguay’s incoming president. In keeping with past precedent for such trips, Lai won’t go to Washington but is due to stop by San Francisco on his way back to Taiwan.
The passage of Taiwanese officials through the U.S., officially referred to as transits, are part of deliberated arrangements made between Washington and Taipei to allow its leaders to engage with the other side on American soil after the two governments cut formal diplomatic ties in 1979.
The arrangements around Lai’s transit don’t differ from previous practices and shouldn’t be used as a pretext by China to engage in provocations, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said last month.
Recent opinion polls suggest that Lai, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, is leading the race to succeed President Tsai Ing-wen next year, though observers say the three-way contest is too volatile to pick a favorite, with months to go before the election in January.
Ahead of Lai’s trip, Chinese state media blasted Lai as a separatist bent on stoking tensions. Beijing considers him a more fervent advocate of Taiwan independence than Tsai. That is partly because of previous remarks he has made, including in 2017 when he described himself as a “pragmatic” worker for Taiwan independence.
Lai has said, if elected, he wouldn’t seek to change the status quo between Taiwan and the mainland. Discussing his 2017 remarks in a television interview aired Monday, Lai said he was referring to how he would work to protect Taiwan’s sovereignty. “The fact is Taiwan is not part of the People’s Republic of China,” he said.
American and Taiwanese officials plan to keep Lai under wraps during his U.S. transit. He is expected to meet with members of the Taiwanese community in New York and San Francisco. Unlike Tsai’s stops in late March and early April, Lai won’t give public remarks, won’t meet with U.S. think-tank scholars and is unlikely to see administration officials other than ones who handle Taiwan policy, though members of Congress are likely to turn up.
Representatives of Lai and his party traveled to Washington last month in part to prepare for the trip. A message the U.S. officials conveyed, according to a person familiar with the talks: The U.S. is listening to Lai’s every word.
One reason for the Biden administration’s concern was a recent comment Lai made while campaigning, saying that he looked forward to the day when “the president of Taiwan can walk into the White House.” The remark raised eyebrows because it suggested Lai could be seeking full diplomatic recognition for Taiwan, a red line for Beijing.
The State Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, has intensified its almost-daily incursions into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zones, sending two dozen jet fighters, bombers and other aircraft on sorties near the island on Sunday, and another 33 on Thursday.
The Chinese state broadcaster this week also began airing “Chasing Dreams,” an eight-part documentary series to mark the 96th anniversary of the PLA’s founding that features footage of military drills around Taiwan. It includes an interview with a Chinese jet pilot saying, “My fighter would be my last missile” if actual battle were to break out.
On Friday, the day before Lai departed for the U.S., Chinese maritime authorities announced a three-day military drill off the coast of Zhejiang province, roughly 300 miles northeast of Taiwan. Taipei’s Ministry of National Defense said the island’s military would closely monitor the exercise.
“One Chinese tactic used in cognitive warfare is to amplify routine drills by disseminating information in an exaggerated manner,” Maj. Gen. Sun Li-fang, the spokesman for Taiwan’s military, said in an interview Saturday before Lai departed for New York. “This is an attempt to magnify the perceived threat of a routine drill to Taiwan,” he said, referring to the exercise and any possible Chinese reactions.
Some political analysts expect China to further step up military activities near Taiwan in response to Lai’s trip, perhaps even repeating the April live-fire exercises.
Beijing “will not overreact, but react they certainly will,” said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University who studies China’s foreign policy. “While it serves Beijing’s interests to have better relations with Washington at this moment,” that doesn’t mean the Chinese leadership would shy from taking strong action on Taiwan, if they deem it necessary, he said.
Nonetheless, the analysts say, Beijing will have to consider how displays of military power have fueled Taiwanese resentment in the past. After China ran combat drills and fired missiles near Taiwan ahead of the island’s 1996 presidential election, the incumbent president, Lee Teng-hui, who had helped steer the island toward democracy and was seen as supportive of Taiwanese nationhood, won with 54% of the vote.
If China reacts strongly to Lai’s transit, “it’s going to backfire actually for Beijing,” said Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist who teaches Taiwan studies at Australian National University.
No comments:
Post a Comment