China is upping the ante against Taiwan and democracies the world over.
Beijing confirmed on Monday that it now asserts formal sovereignty over the entirety of the Taiwan Strait, an area of largely international waters that separates Taiwan from China. While Beijing’s assertion has no credible legal foundation, the ruling Communist Party hopes it will deter the United States and other nations from sending warships through the Taiwan Strait. Discouraging those transits has taken on added concern in Beijing in light of the Biden administration’s moves to deter a prospective Chinese invasion of the island democracy.
That’s not China’s only oceanic outrage this week.
Simultaneously, a Chinese survey vessel has been operating in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, west of Okinawa. As the South China Morning Post notes, that vessel is likely charting terrain features to identify transit routes for PLA submarine forces. Chinese academic reporting from 2020 further suggests that the ship exists for naval rather than energy purposes.
These actions demand concern.
Making outlandish claims to a vast swathe of international waters in both the East and South China Seas, Xi Jinping has underlined his appetite for power and control. He wants to coerce the world into accepting the Western Pacific as Communist China’s own private swimming pool. Xi knows his military control over these waters will translate into immense political influence. Xi knows that if he can act as the gatekeeper to their trade markets, many nations will close their eyes to Beijing’s policies on human rights, intellectual property theft, trade malpractice, and even war against Taiwan.
This is about upholding the rules of an international order that has fueled unprecedented global prosperity since 1945. A great irony of China’s struggle to displace this order is that China itself has been one of the greatest beneficiaries of it. It was not Communist oracles in Beijing who made China an economic powerhouse, after all. Instead, it was China’s access to a global export market in which its low goods prices gave China maximal economic growth.
Regardless, the U.S. must make a clear display of rejecting China’s claims. The vast majority of the waters of the Taiwan Strait are governed by international law. They are open to all who wish to pass through them. Emphasizing that truth, the U.S. should ask Australia, Britain, Japan, France, and India — and any other nations which might be amenable — to participate in a transit through the Strait. Even if only a few nations join the U.S. Navy (which will say much about the European Union’s commitment to its supposedly sacred democratic values), the flotilla’s multilateral quality will remind China that its position is rejected by most of the world. A multilateral flotilla would also mitigate the risk of PLA harassment against it, forcing China to choose between earning international fury or accepting the flotilla’s passage.
Why would this transit carry weight?
Well, to deter Chinese aggression effectively, China must understand two realities. First, nations have the courage and strategic motive to contest its imperialism. Second, nations have the means of doing so. While Taiwan remains too complacent (while President Tsai has done better than her predecessors, Taipei’s failure to spend at least 5% of GDP on defense is astonishing), the length of the Taiwan Strait means that the PLA could struggle to cross it. Especially, that is, if the PLA’s ships and aircraft were being battered by torpedos, missiles, and bombs, and its advanced forces by drones, artillery, and masses of well-trained Taiwanese reserves. Put another way, China knows war with Taiwan is a war that it could very well lose. The political implications for the Communist Party and Xi, in particular, would be catastrophic. Reinforcing that Communist fear is thus both morally and strategically necessary and politically viable.
However, that deterrence won’t succeed if the U.S. and its allies blink in the face of Beijing’s wanton arrogance. It’s time to send a flotilla through the Taiwan Strait.
