Chinese warplanes regularly violate Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone. Chinese officials have repeatedly expressed the view that the entirety of the Taiwan Strait already belongs to China. The United States could be drawn into its first direct military conflict with a nuclear-armed superpower.Ĭhina’s threatening behavior, meanwhile, has only escalated. “They’re not trying to escape.” If war comes, a thriving democracy could be extinguished. She described to me a resilient calm among younger people. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island-Tsai maintained what appeared to be a normal schedule, attending a cultural festival but also visiting with troops. During China’s particularly aggressive military exercises in August-mounted in response to U.S. This approach has earned a nickname in global defense circles: “the porcupine strategy.”įrom Tsai’s perspective, it is important to remain low-key and unrattled, but also to build up the capacity for Taiwan to defend itself. That, combined with a bigger force of civilian reserves, could make the cost of an invasion too high for China. Instead of building large, conventional hardware (airplanes, tanks, submarines), military experts have urged Taiwan to focus on so-called asymmetric capabilities (anti-ship weapons, surface-to-air missiles, stockpiles of small arms and ammunition), which have served Ukraine well in repelling a larger invader. This has prompted calls for a shift in Taiwan’s defense priorities. But China spends more than $200 billion a year. Tsai noted that the Taiwan legislature recently passed a double-digit increase in the defense budget Taiwan is now on pace to spend more than $19 billion on defense in 2023. Of course, a war with China would be enormously lopsided. Read: How China wants to replace the U.S. “If the PLA wants to do something drastic, Xi has to weigh the costs,” Tsai said. Her position toward China and the People’s Liberation Army is defiant: She made clear to me that the Taiwanese will not be bullied, and that Beijing should not misjudge their resolve. Taiwan’s 24 million people have developed their own distinctive and open culture, their own democratic institutions. Tsai chooses her words carefully and appears at peace with the role that history has assigned her. She speaks English with a faint trace of a British accent-she did postgraduate work at the London School of Economics. Tsai is the youngest of 11 children born to the owner of an auto-repair store. The situation requires Tsai to perform a careful balancing act: preparing for war while seeking to avoid it. military and intelligence leaders have pointed to 2027 as a potential time frame for an invasion, believing that China’s military modernization will have advanced sufficiently by then. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned in October that China may be working on a “much faster timeline” for dealing-somehow-with Taiwan. Just as Putin has made the erasure of Ukraine’s sovereignty central to his political project, Xi has vowed to unify China and Taiwan, by force if necessary. Both have undergone democratic transformations and have thus become an ideological danger to the autocrats who covet their territory. Both have giant neighbors who once ruled them as imperial possessions. It’s not hype.”įate has placed Taiwan and Ukraine in similar positions. “So we need to get ourselves ready.” At another point, she emphasized: “There is a genuine threat out there. “It’s real that this thing could happen to us,” Tsai said. Tsai or some future Taiwanese leader could soon have the dubious distinction of playing the role of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky to Xi’s Putin. I told her that I wanted to know what it was like to face a mounting threat, particularly after the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russian President Vladimir Putin-Chinese President Xi Jinping’s self-proclaimed “best friend” on the world stage. There was little small talk as we sat across from each other in armchairs. Tsai was brisk, friendly, and businesslike. When she entered, she was trailed by a retinue of aides-mostly men. We met in a cavernous room decorated with orchids and a grandfather clock. Now in her sixth year in power, Tsai is Taiwan’s first female president. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
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