Taking over Taiwan was a pledge that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping made to senior Party leaders in order to stay in power beyond two terms. But that pledge doesn’t seem likely to be kept.
To change the Chinese Constitution and remove the term limit in 2018, some Communist Party insiders told me a year prior that Xi proposed taking over Taiwan within 10 years and using the next decade to stabilize his rule. Hence, he would need a third and even a fourth term to accomplish the goal that even communist China’s founder, Mao Zedong, couldn’t achieve.
The year 2027 is rapidly approaching, and Donald Trump’s second presidency complicates the situation.
According to Yuan, the team of top military and foreign affairs scholars predicted a Trump victory and that the president-elect would move quickly to broker cease-fires in the Middle East and Ukraine in order to redirect military resources and focus on the Indo–Pacific region.
The Chinese think tank concluded that there is a now-or-never “window of opportunity” to invade Taiwan before 2027, and the CCP must “prepare for a once-in-a-century decisive battle with the United States in the Taiwan Strait,” Yuan stated.
The Chinese scholars might have given Xi the answer he wanted because a two-year opportunity window on Taiwan would rely on crucial factors to operate in the CCP’s favor in order to distract the Trump administration from focusing on the Indo–Pacific: chaos during the transition of power, troubles in the U.S. economy, and serious conflicts between the United States and its allies.
But so far, none of these have happened or look like they are about to happen.
So far, the transition period has been peaceful. The U.S. Federal Reserve has managed inflation without triggering a recession, a scenario that would have kept Trump preoccupied.
Xi’s “window of opportunity” is already closing, and he cannot do much to keep it open without changing his approach to Taiwan.
Can Xi do that? It is unlikely, because his authority beyond two terms is based on his pledge to seize Taiwan. He cannot afford to change his overall plan and stay in power.
Previous communist leaders had more personal clout to change course without losing credibility or power. After telling the Chinese for years that the United States was an imperialist enemy, Mao met with U.S. President Richard Nixon. Deng Xiaoping welcomed Western capital after Mao kicked “evil capitalism” out of China.
Xi wouldn’t have much leeway, especially when he currently faces a power crisis caused by the downfall of another confidant, Miao Hua, a member of the Central Military Commission. Since Xi took power, seven members of the prestigious military decision-making body have been sacked. Among the communist cadres, Miao’s case is no longer viewed as isolated but as part of a pattern in which Xi no longer holds absolute control over the Chinese military.
Last month, on the sidelines of the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Peru, Xi told President Joe Biden about his “red lines,” including the Taiwan issue—or, in the Party’s words, U.S. support for Taiwan’s independence from mainland China.
However, from the perspective of Sun Tzu, the great military strategist in ancient China, the more “red lines” one sets, the more weaknesses one reveals because the enemy would know one’s bottom line in negotiations and buttons to push.
In the case of Taiwan, the United States already knows the geographic parameters of the potential war and Xi’s rough timing. This limits the CCP’s ability to seize Taiwan by surprise, making its occupation of the self-governed island an afterthought. Yet Xi has no flexibility to change his strategy, and time is not on his side.
