Much of the discussion around a U.S. policy response to an attempt by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to take over the Republic of China (Taiwan) has revolved around defending the island from a full-scale invasion. A new report sheds light on what an attempt to take over Taiwan gradually with methods short of war would look like.
The report is from the Coalition Defense of Taiwan, a joint project between the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War. It totals 115 pages and is the result of a year’s worth of meetings with policy experts and government officials. Each step of the takeover scenario it describes is based on careful study of PRC strategic thought and past examples of PRC action.
The report describes a salami-slicing campaign by the PRC to take over Taiwan over a period of four years. After the PRC’s decades-long effort to subdue Hong Kong has essentially come to fruition without an invasion, the U.S. should not discount the possibility of something similar but on a much larger scale in Taiwan.
The PRC’s goal is to become a superpower and undo what it calls the “century of humiliation” from Western powers. “CCP leaders believe the United States and other powers now conspire with ‘separatists’ in Taiwan to maintain an artificial cross-Strait division to contain and divide the PRC against the Chinese people’s will,” the report says. “In the party’s view, returning Taiwan to its rightful place as part of a single, unified, PRC-controlled Chinese state will cement the CCP’s legacy as a restorer of national greatness.”
A full invasion of Taiwan would risk enormous death and destruction on land the PRC believes it owns. That should make it less likely that the PRC would want a full invasion. It believes the U.S. and a small group of Taiwanese independence activists are its enemy, not the Taiwanese people.
A full invasion of Taiwan would also be one of the most difficult military operations ever attempted. Taiwan’s mountainous island terrain and multiple large population centers would be hard to conquer. It has advanced U.S. defensive weaponry. Amphibious landings are always difficult, and the PRC has not fought a major war since 1979. Despite its significant buildup, the PRC military is inexperienced with fighting.
This should not be a source of comfort for those who support Taiwan’s continued sovereignty. The short-of-war scenario the report describes is very plausible, and the PRC has plenty of experience with the kind of cognitive warfare and propaganda it would entail.
The report posits an eight-step campaign to take over Taiwan without a war:
1. The PRC uses cyberwarfare and physical sabotage to significantly degrade Taiwan’s essential services, such as clean water and electricity. Taiwan will be unable to effectively respond to these attacks, thus making the government appear grossly incompetent and creating feelings of insecurity in Taiwanese society.
2. Increased PLA activity around the island of Taiwan begins to exhaust and overwhelm the ROCM [Republic of China military]. PRC information warfare spreads the narrative that the ROCM is incapable of defending Taiwan and decreases trust in the military and feelings of security among the Taiwanese populace. The ROCM, insufficiently equipped to handle this significant uptick in activity, looks to the US for urgent assistance, which the US Department of Defense and US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) are reluctant to provide. The PRC reinforces this reluctance by initiating distracting crises through PRC-affiliated actors or rogue states, forcing the US to spread its resources to address urgent requests for aid by global allies and partners. Without a sufficient or rapid response from the US or Taiwan, the PLA gradually normalizes increases in military activity to further the narrative of ROCM incompetence and helplessness.
3. Taiwan becomes physically isolated through a series of increasingly frequent shipping inspections and aerial and maritime closures. As the international community increasingly avoids the Taiwan Strait and fails to come to Taiwan’s aid, the PRC further demonstrates its ability to escalate activities against Taiwan with impunity.
4. Taiwan also becomes informationally isolated through PRC subsea cable cutting, cyberwarfare, and electronic warfare activities that reduce reliable communications between Taiwan and the US.
5. The PRC uses cognitive warfare to divide Taiwanese society, particularly in terms of political and cross-Strait relations. Those within Taiwanese politics and society who are vocally opposed to unification are pressured, intimidated, and isolated. As Taiwanese society becomes increasingly divided and the situation on the island becomes increasingly dire, many look to blame the vocal “separatists” and find an alternative solution to alleviate their suffering.
6. US support for Taiwan continues to erode as the costs and risks of continued engagement rise. As more people in the US public and government grow worried about the heightened risks of war, many see continued support for Taiwan as a significant risk with little gain.
7. US companies and multinational corporations, presented with a combination of generous incentives and acute threats, also view Taiwan as a dangerous place to do business and are encouraged to move their operations to the PRC.
8. All these efforts support the creation and development of an operational end-state mechanism, which provides Taiwan with a peaceful means to diminish PRC coercion. This end-state mechanism allows for open dialogue between the PRC and Taiwan and advances efforts of peaceful unification.
It spends dozens of pages walking through these steps with specific actions, and most of it sounds like news stories you could easily imagine actually happening, all leading to “peace” when the PRC has completed its takeover and subversion of one of the most prosperous democracies in the world.
As you read through the report, you can almost hear U.S. opponents of supporting Taiwan in the background saying, “China is a great power, and this is China’s part of the world,” “They all speak Chinese and are ethnically Chinese; it’s all one country,” “We can’t be the world’s policeman,” “The U.S. is in danger of escalating the conflict,” “U.S. support for Taiwan is only from big businesses who want to profit from its economy and sell it weapons,” “U.S. support for Taiwan is imperialism/colonialism/white supremacy.” A lot of that messaging would be promoted by PRC information operations in the West.
Lack of U.S. sensitivity to this more gradual, non-war approach will make it harder to detect each of the steps in the campaign as it progresses, the report argues. Since many of the actions are modeled on past PRC behavior, U.S. analysts would be tempted to think they are more of the same, ignoring the threat as it grows.
The PRC is determined, but successfully carrying out a four-year campaign like the one the report describes would be difficult, especially if the U.S. and its allies were alert to the threat.
The report notes that the U.S. must lead to prevent a PRC takeover because of its unique relationship with Taiwan. The Taiwan Relations Act, passed in 1979, says that it is U.S. policy “to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”
“No country besides the U.S. has anything like the Taiwan Relations Act or any legal basis to support Taiwan in a crisis,” the report says. Weakening U.S. public opinion and the will of U.S. policy-makers will be vital to any attempt by the PRC to take over Taiwan.
The U.S. must reiterate and reinforce in the international arena Taiwan’s legal status and rights, the report says. Despite its lack of official diplomatic recognition by most countries, including the U.S., “Taiwan enjoys the same sovereign rights over its maritime territory and its air and digital space as any other democratic country,” the report says. “The two governments must focus their efforts today
on enforcing sovereign rights, preparing to break blockades, ensuring high levels of societal and governmental resilience under pressure, and countering massive information campaigns.”
The report provides recommendations to Taiwan and to the U.S. It says Taiwan should invest in its merchant marine, participate in joint maritime operations with the U.S., Japan, and others, require more foreign-agent reporting and disclosure, and prepare for economic fallout from blockades or dangerous shipping conditions. The U.S. should invest in a larger navy, publicize malign PRC information operations, work with Taiwanese law enforcement to punish foreign agents operating in both countries, and be alert to non-miliary warning indicators that the PRC is advancing a campaign like the one described.
“The key to success in a cognitive war is having the ability to identify that one is being perpetrated and then maintaining the capability to think clearly and continue the high-level functioning of one’s government,” the report concludes. That will be a difficult task for Taiwan, and it will require U.S. leadership, starting now, to rally allies to its side.