The outgoing head of US Indo-Pacific Command said China has stepped up pressure on its neighbors with increasingly bold military actions in a pattern designed to catch them off guard.
Admiral John Aquilino described Beijing’s strategy to the Financial Times as the “boiled frog” tactic, or gradually escalating aggression so that other nations do not immediately realize when a tipping point in the conflict is being reached.
In an interview published on Sunday, he told the FT that these nations must speak out and denounce aggressive behavior by Beijing.
“There must be an ongoing account of China’s bad behavior, which is outside international legal norms. And this story must be told by all nations in the region,” he said.
Chinese leaders are switching to more belligerent rhetoric against the self-ruled island and regularly send dozens of fighter jets at a time across the median line of the Taiwan Strait. Balloons that Taiwan says are from China also often pass over the island’s airspace.
Tensions between China and Taiwan are reaching a boiling point, and many signs point to Chinese military action to occupy the island by force, possibly in just a few years.
While a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be an incredibly complex and dangerous operation, influential China watchers are sounding the alarm about the preparations almost certainly required to conquer the island — an increase in Chinese naval forces, energy stocks and food and large-scale military exercises off its coasts.
“I don’t think they lack anything they need,” Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia engagement at Defense Priorities, said of China’s forces. “You can always ask the question, ‘Could they be more prepared?’ and I suppose there are certain areas, but I have, for a long time, argued that they have what it takes to undertake the campaign.”
What does China need for an all out attack
Over the past two decades, China has pushed for a rapid modernization of its armed forces that has alarmed US military officials and opened options for Chinese leader Xi Jinping on how to reunify Taiwan, the democratic island of 24 million people that Beijing he considers her his. The Chinese Navy, for example, has surpassed the size of the US fleet, and its shipbuilding capacity is easily the largest in the world.
But there are questions about the quality of China’s warships, despite the large numbers, and whether it has the capability for an amphibious assault against Taiwan’s advanced weapons.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense assessed in 2021 that China “lacks the landing vehicles and logistics necessary to launch an incursion into Taiwan”. The US Department of Defense largely agreed, and the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission wrote something similar in its 2020 report, noting that while China had a “lack of amphibious transport or ships and aircraft capable of transporting troops, the Chinese military has sought to use civilian ships to fill these gaps.
Chinese ships and aircraft attempting to invade or blockade the island to subdue it would be highly vulnerable to Taiwan’s advanced weapons arsenal, such as F-16 fighter jets, Patriot missile batteries and Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The question is whether China has built an invasion force that can withstand the damage caused by these weapons in what would be the first amphibious invasion in seven decades.
Others saw signs that China was cornering the civilian shipping needed to meet the heavy materiel needs of an amphibious invasion army.
Thomas Shugart, a former US Navy submarine commander who is now a fellow at the New American Security think tank, wrote for War on the Rocks in August 2021 that “Chinese leaders have already begun to organize civilian transport into auxiliary units military,” highlighting examples of large roll-on/roll-off ferries used in amphibious assault exercises, later confirmed by Chinese media, and adding that the civilian vessels carried both Navy and ground forces units.
While these ferries aren’t necessarily designed to land assault troops, Shugart noted, they are built to carry large numbers of people, load ground forces quickly and with little warning, disembark their troops, and comes back for more; the US military also has fast transport ships and cargo ships to support operations.
“The evidence shows that these fleets are all ready to mobilize, really at some point,” Goldstein said. “China has the biggest ports in the world and they are full of these ships, so putting them together in fleets to do this attack would be very fast, within days.”
Goldstein’s assessment is that while it’s still risky, they “have what it takes and are ready to launch” an attack. “I don’t think we’ll have much warning,” he added, noting that a sudden set of actions that only play out over a period of hours would be more likely than many other clearer, longer-term signs.
US involvement is also an important factor. “There is the possibility of American intervention, which raises the question of how well China can hide its preparations for an invasion.” Cheng stated.
Experts as well as lawmakers and military officials in the US and Taiwan have long debated the preparation of the People’s Liberation Army, as China’s military is known.
“We believe the PLA’s modernization plan is still on track and targets a period of 2027,” Cheng explained, with the goals of being a fully modernized fighting force by then.
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