Since Friday, China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force has sent nearly 150 aircraft into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. Access to such a zone requires aircrews to request entry and to identify themselves and their course.
Insisting that Taiwan is a breakaway province with no sovereign rights, China has ignored these requirements. But what’s really going on?
Well, these intrusions reflect Beijing’s desire to deter Taipei from its cultivation of Western support. But the flights are also motivated by Xi Jinping’s interest in projecting leadership strength.
The air display is certainly noteworthy in its scale and form. While most of the flights have been limited to the southwestern periphery of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, the Chinese may soon conduct exercises farther east. Chieh Chung, a Taiwan-based analyst, told the South China Morning Post, “Through the south or southeast ADIZ, the PLA warplanes are able to more conveniently access Taiwan’s [western coast area] in the event of a conflict and check U.S. forces in the Bashi Channel if it comes to rescue.”
I’m not so sure that the PLA will move up Taiwan’s eastern coast. That would put the PLA in close proximity to the Japanese island of Yonaguni, which is just 75 miles east of Taiwan. And that would risk alienating Japan’s new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who took office on Monday. Beijing is hopeful that Kishida will adopt a more conciliatory stance than his two predecessors.
Still, at least pertaining to the U.S., it bears note that the PLA deployed bombers capable of launching hypersonic vehicle-laden ballistic missiles against U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. Beijing has reacted furiously in recent months as nations have offered support to Taiwan. Beijing also wants Washington to think twice about inviting Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen to a democracy summit in December.
At the tactical level, the flights will boost China’s readiness for any eventual conflict with Taiwan. Considering the PLA’s much greater size, these incursions also allow Beijing to inflict attrition on the Taiwanese air force’s morale and readiness. It’s not easy, after all, for a small number of pilots to need to sit at permanent alert status.
The incursions are also about Beijing politics.
While the Communist Party presents Xi Jinping as a bold leader of destiny, he is under increasing pressure. As he faces an increasingly skeptical international community, economic struggles, demographic and societal weaknesses, and energy shortages, Xi’s credibility is at risk. These flights thus allow Xi to broadcast strength at home and abroad. But they also allow the otherwise cautious leader to throw a bone to party hard-liners.
Notable, here, are two members of the party’s supreme political organ, the Politburo Standing Committee. Xi’s hard-liner-brain, Wang Huning believes the party’s power is ultimately dependent on its unquestioned monopoly of authority. Taiwan’s very existence insults that understanding. Similarly, Li Zhanshu last May portrayed Taiwan’s subjugation as an almost holy responsibility. Reflecting the PLA’s increasingly ideological slant, two of the six uniform members of China’s Central Military Commission (its equivalent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) are political commissars. They will also revel in the intrusions.
Ultimately, then, this action reflects both the Communist Party’s growing concern over Taiwan’s international prestige, and the rise of the Beijing hawks. The next few years should be interesting.
