In hopes of advancing his ambitions for “strategic autonomy” of Europe from the United States during his April 5 to April 7 state visit to China, French President Emmanuel Macron did far more than give Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping a propaganda victory by publicly suggesting some kind of weird moral equivalence between U.S. and Chinese policy regarding Taiwan.
In interviews published on March 9 in Les Echos and Politico regarding Taiwan, he said, “The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must be followers and adapt ourselves to the American rhythm and a Chinese overreaction.”
For Macron, somehow, U.S. policies that seek to arm Taiwan and deter a Chinese invasion are indistinguishable from the CCP’s decades of preparation to invade and destroy Taiwan’s democracy, including putting masses of its “democrats” in concentration camps.
But Macron wasn’t content with this outrageous suggestion of moral equivalence in service of Chinese propaganda.
Just as the Chinese regime began on April 8 its three days of large-scale military blockade exercises around Taiwan in preparation for an invasion, it became known that Macron was going to give the regime more “weapons” that it would use to invade Taiwan.
Specifically, during Macron’s visit, it was announced that Airbus would sell China 50 of its new H160 helicopters.
A state-of-the-art eight-ton helicopter, the H160 features a composite material fuselage, advanced rotor design, and advanced “glass” cockpit and can transport 12 passengers on a 530-mile round-trip.
They'll be sold to a Shanghai-based leasing company that supports offshore oil platforms but will also add to China’s “civilian” fleet of about 1,000 passenger transport helicopters.
A 2013 study by the Asian Sky Group states that Airbus had built 40 percent of China’s civil turbine-powered helicopters.
This relationship dates back to the 1970s sale of the SA 321 Super Frelon, with China having since co-produced several Aérospatiale, now Airbus, helicopter types that also aided the design of indigenous Chinese helicopters; the Super Frelon aided the design of the People’s Liberation Army Ground Force’s (PLAGF) new 27-troop carrying Changhe Z-18 helicopter.
Due to the CCP’s intensive policies of “military-civil-fusion,” these helicopters can all be made available to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and could effectively double the potential helicopter lift of the PLAGF, which has about 1,000 transport and attack helicopters.
So assuming PLAGF Air Assault forces can now access about 1,700 transport helicopters, strike packages of 280 helicopters, perhaps transporting at least 1,500 troops—and light all-terrain fighting vehicles, light artillery, missiles, and small drones—these could be used to attack Taiwan’s six largest civilian airports.
Russian failures in Ukraine demonstrate the risks of deploying lightly armed heliborne airborne forces to capture strategic airports—when defenses are alert and ready.
So the PLA likely will dispatch special forces and mobilize fifth columns in Taiwan to attack key personnel and forces responsible for airport security to delay a defensive response, seeking an assault with maximum surprise.
Should PLA forces take control of these airfields, PLA troops and supplies will come streaming in on some portion of the 4,000 airliners and cargo liners in China’s civilian airlines, almost all made by Europe’s Airbus and the U.S. Boeing Co.
Boeing and Airbus airliners and Chinese airlines regularly participate in PLA “mobility” exercises of inter-regional troop movements, along with thousands of civilian roll-on-roll-off (RORO) barges and much larger ferries that would move most of the PLA’s invasion forces to Taiwan.
Roughly 90 Boeing B747, B777, and B767 large cargo liners, and 86 medium B737 cargo liners in Chinese airlines offer about three times the aerial power projection capacity of the formal PLA Air Force.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan’s six largest airports could process 175,000 passengers daily. Still, with air superiority and the removal of “customs” procedures, the PLA may be able to move more than 200,000 troops per day to Taiwan on about 1,000 airliners.
Clearly, the Biden administration isn’t conveying strongly enough to the European public that a Chinese invasion and conquest of democratic Taiwan constitutes a direct threat to Europe’s security.
Beijing already subsidizes Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine by increasing purchases of Russian petroleum and resources and is apparently ready to begin sales of weapons to Russia that could revive its stalled offensive.
Chinese assistance for Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine would then affirm longstanding Chinese expectations that Russian forces will assist the CCP’s invasion of Taiwan, but that won’t be the end.
A Russian invasion of Poland or the Baltic states may implicate Russian expectation that Beijing will send full armored units and generous logistic support to invade the European allies, as Russia would then assist Chinese campaigns to take control of the South China Sea, neutralize the Philippines, and take over Japan’s Ryukyu Island chain.
In all these Chinese and Russian war gambits, Airbus and Boeing transport aircraft could play a decisive logistic support role: They may help determine whether Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Europe will be dominated by brutal Chinese and Russian dictatorships.
As U.S. and European sanctions in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have halted new sales of airliners to Russia, stopped the supply of spare parts, and barred the entry of Russian airliners to Europe and the United States, it simply makes no sense to wait for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to impose the same sanctions on China.
Should the oft-mentioned U.S. intelligence estimate that the Chinese regime won’t be ready enough to attempt its invasion until 2027 be realistic, then it may be possible to “starve” Chinese airlines of spare parts, potentially taking them out of the CCP’s invasion of Taiwan and its subsequent wars.
To be sure, this move would be severely disruptive to Boeing and Airbus; the latter forecasts that China will need more than 8,000 airliners over the next 20 years, so expect myopic leaders such as Macron to fight sanctions that block the sale of airliners to China.
But if Europe balks, Washington must make clear that it'll begin to restrict the sale of new Airbus airliners to the U.S. market, allowing only the continuation of spare parts and support to sustain safe operations.
It’s an understatement to say that a series of Chinese and Russian wars will impose great sacrifices on Americans and Europeans.
There should be no hesitation to continue barring the sales of airliners to Russia and to halt the sale of airliners and helicopters to China to diminish their capacity to make war.
