Is China using the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a blueprint for an invasion of Taiwan?

Created: 03/02/2022, 12:55 p.m

By: Sven Hauberg

Taiwanese soldiers take part in an exercise to improve army readiness in early January.

© Daniel Ceng Shou-Yi via www.imago-images.de

Beijing is watching very closely what is currently happening in Ukraine.

Because the reaction of the West could decide whether China dares to attack Taiwan one day.

Munich/Taipei/Beijing – Five more years, then Beijing could get serious: By 2027, the country's Chinese army should be able to conquer Taiwan* militarily.

China's head of state and party leader Xi Jinping* gave this route last year.

In the US, there is a belief that Beijing could achieve this goal.

"In the next six years," China* will be stronger in the region than the United States, said the then commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Philip Davidson, before the US Senate in March 2021.

According to Davidson, Taiwan is “clearly one of the goals” of the leadership in Beijing.

China regards Taiwan as a breakaway province, even though the democratically governed island was never part of the People's Republic.

The Communist Party has never ruled out a violent reunification and has recently increased the pressure - for example by repeated overflights of Taiwan's flight safety zone and even Taiwan's airspace.

The Taiwan conflict has been smoldering for many decades, but it has not been as topical as it is today for a long time.

Because the Russian invasion of Ukraine* was a dam rupture that begs the question: is Taiwan next?

And if so, how would the US and its allies react?

Ukraine War: Is Taiwan Next?

Several former US defense officials, including ex-Chief of Staff Mike Mullen and former senior members of the White House national security team and US Department of Defense, traveled to Taiwan on Tuesday to show their support for the beleaguered Taipei government.

"This delegation reflects the bipartisan nature of support for the strong US-Taiwan partnership," Mullen said in Taipei on Wednesday.

"Securing peace and security across the Taiwan Strait is not only in the interest of the US, but also of the world." The US stands by its commitments to Taiwan.

On March 1, a delegation led by Michael Mullen (third from right) was received by Taiwan's Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (fourth from right).

© Ministry of Foreign Affairs/AFP

Beijing reacted to the delegation's visit with usual anger: the United States should stop official contacts with Taiwan so as not to undermine peace and stability, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin in Beijing.

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, on the other hand, naturally saw things the other way around.

She tweeted that her country was "determined to work with the US and other like-minded partners to maintain peace and stability in the region."

Both the Taiwanese and the American side left it open whether it was just coincidence or calculation that the visit to Taiwan was taking place just now.

Either way: the Ukraine war* was also on the agenda in Taipei.

Mullen said in Taipei on Wednesday that his delegation was coming "at a very difficult and critical moment in world history."

Taiwan is not Ukraine, the Chinese side has repeated like a mantra since the beginning of the war.

"It is unwise that the Taiwanese authorities are trying to take advantage of the Ukraine issue," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying tweeted.

Some people in China saw things differently.

The Russian attack shows how quickly Taiwan could do the same, many users wrote on the social network Weibo: "Troops in the morning, reunification at noon, watch the news program together in the evening, hoist the flag early the next morning and play the national anthem." , says a post that has been shared thousands of times.

That was before the Russian advance faltered.

Ukraine conflict: China is closely watching what the West is doing

Meanwhile, Beijing is likely to be watching very closely how the West reacts to Russian aggression.

"The Chinese are becoming increasingly nervous because they did not expect public opinion in the West to shift so quickly and sanctions to take place so quickly," said Eastern Europe and military expert Gustav Gressel from the European Council on Foreign Relations in an interview with merkur.de*.

For Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, the Russian attack is forging the West together.

Vladimir Putin* "speculated that we would drift apart," said Baerbock on Tuesday after meeting her counterparts from Poland and France in Lodz, Poland.

The opposite is the case: "We grew even closer together in these terrible days."

Added to this are the sanctions with which not only Europe and the USA, but also countries like Japan, reacted to the Russian aggression.

"Due to the strong dependence of the Chinese economy on the American market, there are currently very difficult decisions for many Chinese companies and banks to make," says expert Gressel.

Such a united West is unlikely to encourage Beijing to create facts on the Taiwan question.

Unthinkable in China: In Taipei, demonstrators are protesting in front of the Russian representation against the invasion of Ukraine.

© Sam Yeh/AFP

On the other hand, the resolute action of Europe and the US does not automatically mean that the West would react as resolutely in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan as it is now reacting to Russia*.

After all, China knows very well how dependent countries like Germany are on China and how unlikely comprehensive punitive measures against Beijing would be.

China was Germany's most important trading partner last year.

Russia, on the other hand, was only in 13th place according to the Federal Statistical Office.

Goods with a total value of around 245 billion euros were traded between Germany and China;

Germany and Russia, on the other hand, sold each other goods worth just under 60 billion euros.

Ukraine War: Conflicting Signals from China

The USA* had diplomatically recognized the People's Republic of China in 1979 and ended official recognition of the government in Taipei.

At the same time, however, they undertook to ensure Taiwan's "adequate defense capability".

In the event of an attack by the People's Republic on the island state, the USA is not obliged to intervene.

However, Washington reserves the right to intervene in a conflict.

Last year, however, US President Joe Biden* said surprisingly that the US was "obliged" to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.

At the time, it remained unclear whether Biden was unaware of the legal situation – or whether his statement was a commitment to greater support for Taiwan.

The White House corrected Biden's statement a little later, but Washington's pressure on Beijing* on the Taiwan question has been increasing since then.

Meanwhile, conflicting signals are still coming from Beijing as to how the Ukraine conflict should be assessed.

Sometimes Russia and China showed demonstrative unity, as during Putin's Olympic visit to Beijing, then China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi* emphasized that "the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of every country should be protected and respected".

After the Russian invasion, the next turn came: Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying claimed that the attack was not an “invasion” at all, and a little later Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin surprised them with the statement* that Russia and China were “strategic partners”, but not "allies".

Ukraine war: China is in a dilemma

The quibbling of the last few weeks shows the dilemma in which Beijing is stuck.

Along with Russia, they share the idea that the world should no longer be dominated by the West.

However, China cannot approve of separatist movements such as those in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions - because that would only give impetus to independence efforts in Xinjiang*, Tibet* and Hong Kong*.

Putin's tall tale of a genocide in eastern Ukraine is also wisely not spread in China, also with a view to Xinjiang, where Beijing is actually trying to wipe out a people, at least culturally.

The fact that Beijing insists on the "territorial integrity of every country" has been a foreign policy doctrine of the People's Republic since the mid-1950s, which the country should not be throwing overboard any time soon.

And which, by the way, does not conflict with its own claim to Taiwan.

After all, Beijing regards the island as part of its own territory and thus the conflict as an internal matter*.

A week before the Russian invasion, around two-thirds of Taiwanese polled said they didn't think China would use the crisis to invade.

That may have changed in the meantime, as a survey published a few days ago in neighboring Japan suggests: 77 percent of those surveyed there said that the Ukraine war increases the likelihood that China will attack Taiwan.

Regardless of how the war in Ukraine* ends: China will stand by its claims to power over Taiwan.

In the fall, at the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping is likely to be confirmed in office.

The then 69-year-old could use his third term for something that none of his predecessors dared: an attack on Taiwan.

Then it will also become clear how serious the US is about its declarations of support for Taiwan.