WASHINGTON—China’s communist leadership will invade Taiwan if it believes uncoerced unification with the island is not viable by mid-century, according to experts.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must believe there is a chance to unify Taiwan with the mainland if it is to refrain from starting a war for the island, said Chad Sbragia, a research analyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses think tank.
“It’s up to [China] to determine what the degree of unification or the progress toward unification is. But, absent that, it looks like conflict is extremely likely,” Mr. Sbragia said during an Oct. 5 forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
“I just don’t understand how this comes out any other way [than war] absent a significant change in conditions.”
The CCP maintains that Taiwan is a part of China that must be united with the mainland by any means necessary. However, the regime has never controlled Taiwan, which has maintained a de facto independence since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
CCP leader Xi Jinping has nevertheless linked the unification of the two nations to his goal of making China the world’s leading superpower by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the CCP’s takeover of China.
Conflict Could Be ‘Inevitable’
The 2049 goal, Mr. Sbragia said, creates a “timeline for conflict,” a “countdown” in which overt hostilities become increasingly likely the longer peaceful unification is postponed.“Although Xi has not set a requirement to unify Taiwan during his tenure, China will act militarily to either prevent permanent loss of Taiwan or if [the CCP] concludes that the trajectory towards unification is substantively degraded,” Mr. Sbragia said.
“Every day that we move forward, this problem gets worse. It doesn’t get better.”
Significantly, Mr. Sbragia added that the CCP would not be dissuaded from military action even if it believes it cannot win a war for Taiwan.
Mr. Sbragia, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for China during the Trump administration, said that Chinese military leadership expressed as much when he was serving in that role.
“Don’t assume that because we’ll lose, we won’t go,” Mr. Sbragia paraphrased Chinese military leadership as saying at the time.
Such circumstances place China, Taiwan, and the United States in a situation defined by “progressively worsening conditions over time.”
“China’s adherence to a timeline for unification will ultimately take priority over war avoidance and, until then, Taiwan will remain a source of chronic crisis and intractable conditions for all those involved,” Mr. Sbragia said.
Washington Must Affirm Support for Peace
To that end, the United States should work to convince the CCP that a peaceful unification of the mainland and Taiwan is possible or, minimally, not signal that it is impossible, said Bonnie Glaser, a managing director for the German Marshall Fund think tank.“I agree that, if Xi Jinping believes there is a real possibility of permanent loss of Taiwan, that he would go to war whether he perceives that the [military] is ready or not,” Ms. Glaser said.
“It is unwise for both Taiwan and the United States to be pursuing policy and actions that would lead Xi Jinping to conclude that it is impossible to achieve some mutually acceptable outcome.”
Likewise, she said, the CCP will invade Taiwan regardless of cost if it believes the island is on a clear path to declaring formal independence and that the United States supports that independence.
In such circumstances, Mr. Xi would feel that the regime “has to go to war.”
Conversely, Mr. Xi and the CCP do appear to still believe, however tenuously, that peaceful unification with Taiwan is possible. As such, Ms. Glaser said, war is not yet inevitable.
“If Xi Jinping still holds on to the idea that there is really a pathway toward integration if he believes what the Party said in its documents, that time and momentum … is on the side of Beijing, then ultimately he will be making a calculation. What are the costs? What are the benefits?
“We don’t want him to conclude that it is absolutely impossible to achieve unification peacefully or without force,” she said.
Despite this, she added, the Biden administration appears to be going against the precedent said by previous administrations and has not affirmed that it would accept any peaceful resolution to the crisis.
“In prior administrations, the United States has said that we would support any outcome that is peacefully negotiated between the two sides of the Strait,” Ms. Glaser said.
“This administration has not made that statement. And I think that’s problematic.”
