7 reasons why China won’t invade Taiwan

 

It is known that Taiwan is slightly smaller than Maryland and Delaware combined, with a population of 24 million. It is a small island about 100 miles off the coast of southern China.

You have to know Taiwan first came under Chinese control in the 17th century when the Qing dynasty began administering it. In 1895, the Qing gave up the island to Japan after losing the first Sino-Japanese War.

After Japan lost WW II, China re-took Taiwan, but a civil war broke out between nationalist government forces led by Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong’s Communist Party. When the Communists won in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist party, known as the Kuomintang, fled to Taiwan, where they ruled for the next several decades.

Here are 7 practical reasons why China won't resort to using force:

1- Taiwan has natural defenses including a rugged coastline with few wide beaches suitable for landing enough troops to subdue 24 million people. The mountainous terrain is riddled with tunnels designed to provide cover for insurgents and important leaders. 

2- Taiwan and Ukraine cannot be compared in military strength, Taiwan is armed to the teeth. Unlike Ukraine’s steppe-like fertile plains and plateaus, Taiwan consists of over 100 islands. Taiwan’s outer islands are dotted with missiles, rockets, and artillery guns. In addition, Taiwan’s granite hills are home to tunnels and bunker systems.

3- Potential US involvement is obviously a key wild card when assessing an invasion scenario. While officially Washington maintains “strategic ambiguity” on the question whether it would defend Taiwan militarily if needed, none other than President Joe Biden himself has repeatedly answered directly in the affirmative. Amid the China-U.S. competition it seems more and more likely that Washington cannot afford to allow Beijing a free hand in any military campaign against Taiwan.

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According to the Council for Foreign Relations, The United States participates in military training and dialogues with Taiwan, regularly sails ships through the Taiwan Strait to demonstrate its military presence in the region, and has encouraged Taiwan to increase its defense spending.

4- The current Japanese government under Kishida has followed up on signals from the late Prime Minister Abe that Tokyo would help to defend Taiwan.

5- China’s export markets drying up in Europe and the United States, the Chinese real estate crisis deepening further, the World Bank and the IMF predicting a gloomy economic growth outlook of 1.7 percent and 2.7 percent respectively, the immediate key priority for the Chinese leadership is not to use force in the Taiwan Strait but to strengthen the economy.

6- Last year, the Rhodium Group examined the potential global economic disruptions resulting from a hypothetical conflict, defined as a blockade of Taiwan by China that halts all trade between Taiwan and the rest of the world.

The group found well over $2 trillion is at risk, even before the inevitable sanctions that would be imposed on China, or a military response.

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7- If Beijing ever gave orders to invade, the PLA would obviously aim for a blitzkrieg-type attack, overwhelming the island before the US could mount a defense. Note this is the same strategy that Putin attempted in Ukraine, with disastrous results. One year in, Russia is no closer to victory.

While China maintains naval superiority in the South China Sea, there are indications that an invasion wouldn’t be so easy to pull off, Taiwan’s military has fortified defenses around key landing points and regularly conducts drills to repel Chinese forces arriving by sea and from the air. Chinese troops who make it ashore would face roughly 175,000 full-time soldiers and more than 1 million reservists ready to resist an occupation.

At last, the Chinese and US navies will continue to rattle sabers and play war games in the Taiwan Strait but there will be no actual war over the tiny island.