BY STAS MARGARONIS
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry says China’s latest maritime operations around Taiwan is “its largest maritime operations since 1996, dispatching almost 90 naval and coast guard vessels to waters stretching from the southern Japanese islands to the South China Sea” according to the Taiwan Straits Risk Report.[1]
The December 11th report notes that China’s operations “were intended to demonstrate not only China’s ability to mount a maritime blockade of mainland Taiwan, but also to underscore the difficulties that the United States and key allies like Japan would face were they to attempt to defend Taipei from Chinese military aggression.”
The Taiwan Straits Risk report is produced by Peter Enav who spent 17 years living and working in Asia, including nine (2005-2014) as the head of the Taipei bureau of the Associated Press and Mike Chinoy, consulting editor, who is a Nonresident Scholar at the University of California San Diego’s 21st Century China Center. Previously, Chinoy spent 24 years as a foreign correspondent for CNN, serving as the network’s first Bureau Chief in Beijing.
Enav warns that ocean carriers and marine insurers need to be concerned about these developments because: “What happens when the Chinese begin morphing to harassing foreign shipping in the area, eg, forcing Taiwan bound vessels to fill out customs declarations and/or submit to official inspections in Chinese ports. What does that do to insurance premiums? I wonder (if) Lloyd’s (the marine insurer) is already thinking about this. If not, I would respectfully suggest they begin …”[2]
The report notes that China has so far not commented on its initiative, though much has been made of Beijing’s apparent interest in “expressing its displeasure with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s just concluded visit to Taiwanese-allied Pacific islands, during which he stopped off briefly in the U.S. state of Hawaii and the U.S. territory of Guam. “
The report also notes the following:
1) The Chinese maritime mobilization is very much in keeping with China’s current Taiwan strategy, “which is fundamentally oriented towards undermining Taiwanese morale to the point where Taiwanese leaders eventually acquiesce to longstanding Chinese demands to accept political control from Beijing – all without a shot being fired. A key part of this strategy is to calibrate activities in just such a way that the United States does not feel justified in launching a substantial military pushback of its own.”
2) By significantly “ratcheting up the scope of its “gray-zone, short of war” activities in and around the Taiwan Strait, Beijing has put the incoming Trump administration on notice that the goal posts have shifted yet again on what passes for acceptable levels of Chinese military activity in the area.”
3) These actions reflect “Beijing’s strong expectation that the incoming American administration has little or no interest in confronting the People’s Liberation Army over its offensive operations in and around the Taiwan Strait. This is based not only on President-elect Trump’s long-held assessment that getting involved in a war over a relatively small piece of far-off territory makes precious little sense, but also on his rapidly emerging belief that Taiwanese leaders have systematically destroyed the American chip industry and at the same time failed to act responsibly in undertaking the necessary steps to improve their military preparedness vis a vis Beijing.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Taiwan Strait Risk Alert, December 11, 2024
[2] Email to author