The People’s Liberation Army of China has begun two days of military exercises around Taiwan. The exercises are a reaction against new Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s pro-sovereignty inaugural address this week. They also seek to mobilize popular Chinese will against Taiwan’s sovereignty. The exercises likely have the additional purpose of expressing Beijing’s deep dissatisfaction with escalating Taiwan-focused exercises between the United States, Japan, and the Philippines.
At a military operational level, these exercises are clearly designed to drain the morale and readiness of Taiwan’s manifestly underfunded and insufficiently capable military. Still, it is exceptionally unlikely that China is preparing to invade Taiwan in the immediate future. That invasion is highly likely to occur before this decade is out, but not in the immediate future. This timeline concern bears note because of suggestions by some that these exercises are a cover for a looming invasion. Global Press claims, for example, that sources at China’s Xinhua state media outlet and the Chinese defense ministry have told it that China will invade Taiwan in “early June.”
I think not.
Xinhua has offered no such reporting to that effect. In addition, it is extraordinarily unlikely that Chinese defense officials would dare disclose such war plans. Only the very most senior officers would know of such plans at this point. But those officers also know they would rapidly be put up against a wall if found to be leaking such sensitive planning. This fear would be further reinforced by the PLA’s increasingly rapacious counterintelligence apparatus. More importantly, there are no credible indications that the PLA is preparing for a massive assault on Taiwan. Some of these warning indicators could be hidden from public view and perhaps even U.S. intelligence detection. But other indicators, such as unusual unit deployments at scale, extreme efforts to maximize warship, troop transport, and combat aircraft readiness, spare parts hoarding, and reinforced command and control redundancy, would be manifestly obvious (for more on this, read John Culver here).
Instead, the real purpose of these exercises is twofold. First, to deter Lai and Washington from taking steps that further upset Beijing. Second, to bolster the Chinese popular resolution to see Taiwan returned to compliance under Chinese Communist Party authority. To that end, the CCTV state broadcaster and Xinhua, People’s Daily, China Youth Daily, and Global Times outlets all prominently featured these exercises in their coverage on Thursday. CCTV blared rather unsubtly, “The sword is out of the sheath!”
Of key note here is the desire to inculcate military personnel, in particular, with the exigency of bringing Taiwan to heel. Evincing as much, the PLA’s website had 11 different Taiwan-focused articles live on Thursday. One article offered a display of Mao-era-style propaganda posters showing off various PLA strike platforms, such as its J-20 stealth fighter jet. Another article explained that the exercises are “a severe warning to external forces not to condone and support ‘Taiwan independence’ and interfere in China’s internal affairs.”
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Another video showed various forces in action in support of the exercises. Aside from the musical overlay’s strong similarity with the Starship Troopers theme, it is clear that the video is designed for China’s domestic audience. The video features a Type 054A guided missile/air defense frigate. But while this is a capable warship, the video focuses far more on theater than combatant substance. At the 1-minute, 9-second mark, for example, general quarters sound, and we get a labored 26 seconds of various PLA-N personnel running to their strangely unmanned combat information center. This video is plainly targeting the national consciousness at home rather than bolstering Lai’s fear in Taipei.
Still, it is telling that so much Chinese state media attention is being brought to these exercises and so much effort expended to generate a public reaction. If not today or tomorrow, Chinese President Xi Jinping is clearly preparing his people for war. And at the margin, growing Western tensions with Russia incentivize Xi to act sooner rather than later in the hope of forcing a division of U.S. military capabilities.