Laurent Amelot, director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the Thomas More Institute, co-author of a note entitled "Can the status quo in the Taiwan Strait be maintained?" which has just been published.
On April 8, 2023, the Eastern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) launched a three-day joint exercise around the island of Taiwan and near that of Matsu.
This exercise, in the continuity of the previous ones, is part of a show of force by a Chinese regime sure of itself and at the head of which is a Xi Jinping who appears viscerally obsessed with Taiwan.
This operation aims to consolidate the questioning of the
status quo
in the Strait of Formosa by modifying the balance of the balance of power in this sensitive maritime passage, which Beijing now considers as its own by cheerfully crossing the median line, to impose on the rest of the world the Chinese political agenda as well as its rhythm strategy and to place the Taiwanese population under permanent pressure while taking care to act below the threshold of conflict.
However, if this exercise, which echoes those of August 2022 by carrying out an encirclement maneuver backed by an anti-submarine warfare exercise and by mobilizing for the first time an aircraft carrier, the Shandong,
in
its final phase, appears to be of modest scale, it nevertheless continues to outline the outlines of imposition scenarios and related action strategies – the operational value of the Chinese armed forces remaining an unknown while the constraints linked to the characteristics geographical areas of Taiwan are perfectly identified.
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This exercise takes place in a particular context where the combination of encounters is not fortuitous.
Indeed, if it responds to the meeting of April 5, 2023 between the Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy and the Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in California, it also takes place the day after the return of the former Taiwanese president. and figurehead of the Kouo-Min-Tang (KMT) party, Ma Jing-jeou, of a nearly two-week stay in mainland China and just after Emmanuel Macron completed a state visit to the People's Republic of China, with Ursula Van Der Leyden, President of the European Union.
These comments are anachronistic and constitute geopolitical and strategic nonsense.
Laurent Amelot
Also, if this exercise remains limited in its content, it demonstrates that Beijing remains absolutely firm on its positions while giving pledges to the KMT to weaken the DPP, Tsai Ing-wen's party, ten months before the presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan. – the challenge for Taiwanese public opinion, according to Beijing, being to choose between the camp of “peace”, i.e. the KMT, or that of “war”, i.e. say the DPP, with in sight, if the KMT wins, the hypothesis of a warming of commercial ties with a view to “economic integration as a factor of political unification”.
This political framework, which was that of Ma Jing-jeou during his second term, led to an impasse, with Taiwanese public opinion refusing the idea.
Beijing, impatient,
then shifted the pressure slider from the economic to the military.
Conversely, another victory for the DPP would mark the continuation of military tensions in the strait.
Also, if this exercise received wide media coverage in Europe, Beijing orchestrated it meticulously so as not to offend either Paris or Brussels – the Chinese Party-State seeking to renew dialogue and economic relations with the Europeans while trying to distend the links between them and Washington.
The Chinese authorities have partially succeeded in their bet, the French president responding favorably to Beijing's suggestions and isolating France on the European and transatlantic scenes during journalist interviews granted during his return flight to Paris.
Indeed, in Brussels and in the vast majority of European capitals, it is the perception of a China threatening peace and stability in the Strait of Formosa and, beyond, in the Indo-Pacific,
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Faced with these prospects, the French president adopts a singular position by affirming that France and the EU have no interest in getting involved in a conflict in the Strait of Formosa, that France must not align on Washington's conflicting positions likely to provoke an overreaction from Beijing and that France, conceived as a 'balancing power', must promote the idea of an EU embodying a 'third way' in a rapidly changing international order .
These comments are anachronistic and constitute geopolitical and strategic nonsense.
Indeed, on the scale of France, dismissing Washington and Beijing back to back is tantamount to weakening our strategic relations with the United States and our Western allies while valuing the Chinese communist regime whose nature is deeply dictatorial and aggressive.
This also amounts to placing the economy above politics in our relations with China, following the example of Germany, questioning the credibility of our strategic maneuver in the Indo-Pacific stated during two speeches in Sydney and Nouméa in 2018 then formalized in various programmatic documents by the Ministries of the Armed Forces and Foreign Affairs.
Apart from the fact that France is the only state to support the idea of Europe's strategic autonomy, it is clear that if the EU is still a commercial power, its ability to attract is extinguished and that to produce strategic vision and meaning remains limited, which seriously undermines its credibility internationally.
Laurent Amelot
On a European scale, Macron's approach is utopian.
Apart from the fact that France is the only state to support the idea of Europe's strategic autonomy, it is clear that if the EU is still a commercial power, its ability to attract is extinguished and that to produce strategic vision and meaning remains limited, which seriously undermines its credibility internationally.
At a time when the Baltic countries and the members of the Visegrad group, through a diplomacy of values built around the development of economic relations and parliamentary visits, are shifting from communist China to Taiwan, Brussels remains incapable of adopting a clear position on China and to provide a concrete framework for its Indo-Pacific strategy.
On the scale of the Indo-Pacific, the perception of France offering a blank check to Beijing to promote discourse and interests without constraint at a time when, in this global maritime Asia, concern is growing about Chinese ambitions and the search for strategic partners to ensure security prevails among a number of local actors, there is a risk of leaving our partners on the Indo-Pacific axis doubtful, especially since the French Navy building, the Prairial, was carrying out a "
freedom
of navigation” in the China Seas just as President Macron was answering questions from reporters and Beijing was carrying out its military exercise.
Also, the outcry caused by President Macron's talks proves the imperative need to reassess and rebuild France's China policy.
Can Paris remain anchored in the Gaullist doctrinal framework of "friend, ally, but not aligned"?
Is it something other than an egotistical but irresponsible posture given the situation in the Indo-Pacific region and, more generally, in the world?
It is high time for France to redefine its interests in the Indo-Pacific and align its ambitions with its means.
It is high time that it clarified its positions by firmly reaffirming the need to preserve the status quo in the Strait of Formosa and the territorial integrity of Taiwan, but also its values which, if it is still France, oppose frontally, and more and more,
