Beijing’s military advance is eroding Taiwan’s edge: US

• Staff writer, with CNA and AFP

Beijing’s military modernization has eroded Taiwan’s potential advantages should a cross-strait conflict occur, the Pentagon said in a report on Tuesday, as it indicated four courses that potential Chinese action could take.

The US Department of Defense said in its annual Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China report that Taiwan has “historically enjoyed military advantages in the context of a cross-strait conflict, such as technological superiority and the inherent geographic advantages of island defense.”

However, many of these advantages have been eroded or negated by China’s “multi-decade military modernization effort” as Beijing’s official defense budget has continued to grow over the years and was roughly 15 times that of Taiwan’s last year, it said.

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has a range of options to coerce Taipei based on its increasing capabilities in multiple domains, including air and maritime blockades, air and missile campaigns, an amphibious invasion of Taiwan, as well as limited force or coercive options, it said.

One of the scenarios is the Joint Island Landing Campaign, which would “break through or circumvent shore defenses, establish and build a beachhead, transport personnel and materiel to designated landing sites in the north or south of Taiwan’s western coastline,” and then seize and occupy key targets or the entire nation, the report said.

“With few overt military preparations beyond routine training, China could launch an invasion of small Taiwan-occupied islands in the South China Sea such as Pratas [Islands, or Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島] or Itu Aba [Island, or Taiping Island, 太平島]. A PLA invasion of a medium-sized, better-defended island such as Matsu or Kinmen is within China’s capabilities,” it said.

“However, this kind of operation involves significant, and possibly prohibitive, political risk, because it could galvanize pro-independence sentiment on Taiwan and generate international opposition,” it said.

In its first public estimate of China’s nuclear capacity, the annual report said that the nation has warheads numbering “in the low 200s” in its nuclear stockpile, fewer than the 300 or more estimated by independent analysts.

That number is expected to double over 10 years, it said.