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.
Former Peking University law professor Yuan Hongbing told me that two months before the November U.S. presidential election, the six-member Chinese Military Commission, chaired by Xi, deployed an ad hoc think tank to forecast the geopolitical climate. Yuan, who now lives in Australia, was Xi’s drinking buddy in the 1980s and has maintained high-level connections within the CCP.
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 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,” he added.
The Chinese scholars might have given Xi the answer he wanted because a two-year opportunity window on Taiwan would rely on crucial factors in the CCP’s favor 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.
In addition, Trump had already begun announcing foreign policies before his inauguration. Last month, under the mediation of the United States and France, Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah reached a 60-day cease-fire agreement, subsiding one front of the war in the Middle East. Trump wasn’t directly involved but claimed credit on Truth Social by quoting a media report saying the truce agreement was a “direct result” of his incoming administration. Trump has also demanded the return of hostages taken in the Middle East by his Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, threatening historic U.S. military action if this does not happen.
In Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have indicated a willingness to work with Trump to end the war between their countries.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 (CMC). 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” or absolute no-gos, 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 states, 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.
