Category: PRC - Kharis Templeman (祁凱立)

PTIP: The World's Most Dangerous Place? Assessing the Prospects for War and Peace in the Taiwan Strait

11/16/2023

On behalf of Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and its National Security Task Force, the Hoover Institution held The World’s Most Dangerous Place? Assessing the Prospects for War and Peace in the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 12:00 PM PT.

In recent years, numerous analysts have warned of an increasing risk of war in the Taiwan Strait. Others, however, have argued that military conflict remains unlikely, and that the risk of war should not be over-hyped. Drawing from his recent book, Scott Kastner outlines a framework through which to assess the prospects for military conflict between China and Taiwan. Drawing on international relations theory, Kastner outlines several causal pathways through which a Taiwan Strait conflict could occur, and assesses how broad trends in China-Taiwan-US relations are affecting the likelihood of these different scenarios. He concludes with policy suggestions for how actors in Beijing, Taipei and Washington could mitigate the risks of a war in the Taiwan Strait.

About the Participants

Scott L. Kastner is a professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He graduated from Cornell University and received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego. His books include Political Conflict and Economic Interdependence across the Taiwan Strait and Beyond (Stanford University Press, 2009); China’s Strategic Multilateralism: Investing in Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2019; with Margaret Pearson and Chad Rector); and War and Peace in the Taiwan Strait (Columbia University Press, 2022).

Kharis Templeman is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and part of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific. Templeman is a political scientist (Ph.D. 2012, Michigan) with research interests in Taiwan politics, democratization, elections and election management, party system development, and politics and security issues in Pacific Asia.

PTIP: Assessing the Prospects for War and Peace in the Taiwan Strait [Postponed due to speaker illness]

4/27/2023

[This talk was cancelled and will be rescheduled at a later date.]

On behalf of Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and its National Security Task Force the Hoover Institution invites you to The World’s Most Dangerous Place? Assessing the Prospects for War and Peace in the Taiwan Strait on Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 12:00 PM PT.

In recent years, numerous analysts have warned of an increasing risk of war in the Taiwan Strait. Others, however, have argued that military conflict remains unlikely, and that the risk of war should not be over-hyped. Drawing from his recent book, Scott Kastner outlines a framework through which to assess the prospects for military conflict between China and Taiwan. Drawing on international relations theory, Kastner outlines several causal pathways through which a Taiwan Strait conflict could occur, and assesses how broad trends in China-Taiwan-US relations are affecting the likelihood of these different scenarios. He concludes with policy suggestions for how actors in Beijing, Taipei and Washington could mitigate the risks of a war in the Taiwan Strait.

This talk will draw from Prof. Kastner's new book, entitled War and Peace in the Taiwan Strait, available from Columbia University Press, November 2022.

Speaker Bio
Scott L. Kastner is a professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He graduated from Cornell University and received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego. His books include Political Conflict and Economic Interdependence across the Taiwan Strait and Beyond (Stanford University Press, 2009); China’s Strategic Multilateralism: Investing in Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2019; with Margaret Pearson and Chad Rector); and War and Peace in the Taiwan Strait (Columbia University Press, 2022).

PTIP: Then What?: Assessing the Military Implications of Chinese Control of Taiwan

2/28/2023

On behalf of Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and its National Security Task Force, the Hoover Institution invites you to a talk by Caitlin Talmadge, associate professor of Security Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, entitled Then What? Assessing the Military Implications of Chinese Control of Taiwan on Friday, March 3, 2023 from 12:00 - 1:15 pm PT. To attend, register at the event page.

Talk Abstract
The military implications of Chinese control of Taiwan are understudied. Chinese control of Taiwan would likely improve the military balance in China's favor because of unification's positive impact on Chinese submarine warfare and ocean surveillance capabilities. Basing Chinese submarine warfare assets on Taiwan would increase the vulnerability of U.S. surface forces to attack during a crisis, reduce the attrition rate of Chinese submarines during a war, and likely increase the number of submarine attack opportunities against U.S. surface combatants. Furthermore, placing hydrophone arrays off Taiwan's coasts for ocean surveillance would forge a critical missing link in China's kill chain for long-range attacks. This outcome could push the United States toward anti-satellite warfare that it might otherwise avoid, or it could force the U.S. Navy into narrower parts of the Philippine Sea. Finally, over the long term, if China were to develop a large fleet of truly quiet nuclear attack submarines and ballistic missile submarines, basing them on Taiwan would provide it with additional advantages. Specifically, such basing would enable China to both threaten Northeast Asian sea lanes of communication and strengthen its sea-based nuclear deterrent in ways that it is otherwise unlikely to be able to do. These findings have important implications for U.S. operational planning, policy, and grand strategy.

Speaker Bio
Caitlin Talmadge is associate professor of Security Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, as well as Senior Non-Resident Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, and Research Affiliate in the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During fall 2022 she also holds the Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the United States Library of Congress.

Professor Talmadge’s research and teaching focus on deterrence and escalation, U.S. military operations and strategy, and security issues in Asia and the Persian Gulf. She is author of The Dictator’s Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes (Cornell, 2015), which Foreign Affairs named the Best Book in Security for 2016 and which won the 2017 Best Book Award from the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association. In addition, she is co-author of U.S. Defense Politics: The Origins of Security Policy (fourth edition, Routledge, 2021), and she is currently writing a book with Professor Brendan Green on nuclear escalation risk in the emerging deterrence environment.

PTIP: Taiwanese at the UN: The Use and Abuse of UN Resolution 2758

5/31/2022

On behalf of The Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region (PTIP) and its National Security Task Force, the Hoover Institution invites you to Taiwanese at the UN: The Use and Abuse of UN Resolution 2758 on Tuesday, May 31, 2022 from 11:30am-12:45pm PDT.

In 1971, UN Resolution 2758 granted the seat occupied by the Republic of China in the General Assembly and the Security Council to the People's Republic of China (PRC). In recent years, the PRC has attempted to reinterpret this resolution as an endorsement of its "One China Principle," and it has promoted the fallacy that UN member states came to a determination that Taiwan was a part of the PRC. Yet, as the historical official records show, member states made no such determination about Taiwan's international status.

This effort around Resolution 2758 is part of a broader campaign by the PRC to expand its influence in UN-affiliated bodies. Taiwan remains the foremost target of this campaign. Since 2016, at Beijing's behest, Taiwanese representatives have been blocked from participating even as observers in international organizations such as the World Health Assembly (WHA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The PRC has institutionalized and normalized its stance on Taiwan within these organizations by signing secret agreements, restricting the access of Taiwan nationals to the UN and its facilities, and embedding PRC nationals across various levels of UN staff. The UN and its specialized agencies have not made the texts of these agreements available to the public or to any entity beyond the main signatories, though leaked guidance memos provide insights into the scope of MOU contents.

In this event, Jessica Drun will discuss Beijing’s efforts to “internationalize” its “One China Principle" and to conflate it with UN Resolution 2758. Her remarks will draw on a recent report, co-authored with Bonnie Glaser of the German Marshall Fund, that documents Beijing’s expanding influence in UN-linked organizations. She will be joined by Chih-Fu Yeh, a PhD candidate in biology at Stanford University, who in December 2020 was improperly barred from joining a UNESCO-backed winter school session because of his Taiwanese nationality. Mr. Yeh will describe his own experience and highlight how overly strict interpretations of UN regulations and guidelines continue to impose real costs on Taiwanese citizens.

Jessica Drun is a Nonresident Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. She has also held positions in the defense contracting space and the National Bureau of Asian Research. Ms. Drun specializes in cross-Strait relations, Taiwan politics, and U.S.-Taiwan relations and regularly provides commentary on these issues. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

Chih-Fu Yeh is a PhD candidate studying microbial community ecology and evolution in Department of Biology at Stanford University. He was born and raised in Taiwan. In Winter 2020, Chih-Fu applied to a ICTP/UNESCO winter school session on quantitative systems biology, and was denied permission to attend the event because of his Taiwanese nationality.

PTIP: Phillip Saunders, April 6

4/7/2022

On April 6, Phillip Saunders of National Defense University spoke about PLA modernization and its implications for Taiwan's defense strategy and U.S.-Taiwan security cooperation. The talk abstract is below; the video is now available at the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific event page.

Drawing upon the new book Crossing the Strait: China’s Military Prepares for War with Taiwan, Dr. Saunders will discuss China’s available military options, how organizational reforms and new capabilities have improved the PLA’s ability to execute these options, the current cross-strait military balance, the challenges China would face in trying to resolve the Taiwan issue by force, and how Beijing weighs military, economic, and political factors in its evolving Taiwan policy calculus. His presentation will draw upon extensive open-source analysis of PLA efforts to build the necessary power projection capabilities and discuss how lessons learned from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may affect thinking in China, Taiwan, and the United States.

Featuring Phillip C. Saunders Director, Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs National Defense University, followed by conversation with Kharis Templeman, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Taiwan Is Not Ukraine: Stop Linking Their Fates Together

1/28/2022

Sun Yat-sen still looms large in Taiwan.

Russia’s military buildup around Ukraine has triggered the most serious crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. Over 100,000 Russian troops are deployed near the border with Ukraine, poised to launch a major military assault at a moment’s notice. While these developments appear only to affect European security, American commentators have been quick todraw parallels to Taiwan.

The similarities seem obvious. Like Ukraine, Taiwan faces an existential threat from one of Eurasia’s great autocratic powers, and it is also a Western-oriented democracy that the United States has an interest in keeping free from coercion. Both Ukraine and Taiwan are being framedas critical test cases of America’s willingness to uphold global norms against the use of military force to seize territory. Some observers have even gone so far as to argue that their fates will be linked: a failure to respond to military action against Ukraine would weaken American credibility and invite an attack on Taiwan by the People’s Republic of China.

Put simply, this is lazy analysis. In the current geopolitical moment, the differences between Ukraine and Taiwan are far more important than their similarities — and linking together the security threats that the two countries face can make both situations worse. The United States should not continue to divert limited resources away from the Indo-Pacific, where the military balance is shifting in China’s favor over the next decade, to a region that is both less crucial to American interests and where the balance of power is more advantageous to Washington. U.S. prioritization, not reputation, is what really matters for Taiwan’s security.

The rest of this commentary appears at War on the Rocks.

Testimony for US-China Economic and Security Review Hearing

2/22/2021

On February 18, I had the privilege of joining a strong group of witnesses in testifying before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on the topic of "Deterring PRC Aggression toward Taiwan." The USCC has a congressional mandate "to monitor, investigate, and submit to Congress an annual report on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, and to provide recommendations, where appropriate, to Congress for legislative and administrative action."

I can still remember when I first became familiar with the depth and quality of USCC's annual report, when I was an undergraduate taking -- what else? -- Chinese politics with Melanie Manion at the University of Rochester. Parts of it were assigned reading then, and parts no doubt still are now, 20 years later, in the many Chinese security and politics courses around the country. So it is gratifying and a bit humbling to be in a position to contribute in some small way to the next iteration.

I also want to note here that, while I was an undergraduate, I received crucial funding from the National Security Education Program (NSEP, now known as the Boren Awards) to study abroad in Beijing and Taipei. That experience kindled my interest in Taiwan, set me on my current trajectory and, quite literally, changed my life. I hope that robust funding for studying the language and culture of countries that have national security implications for the United States will be available for years to come--it is a smart investment in our future, and an increasingly important incentive to learn a foreign language in an era when the numbers of American students studying abroad in China has dropped precipitously.

I would not be in a position today to contribute to the public conversation on Taiwan's security issues without the help of the Boren program, and I hope my testimony last week will go some small way toward repaying the investment NSEP made in me and my career.

The full video of the panel and the written testimony, including my own, are available at the USCC hearing website. In addition, since it is much abridged from the written testimony, I have posted my oral remarks below.

Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today. I have been asked to cover quite a lot of ground in my written testimony, so in my oral remarks I’m going to focus on my comparative advantage in this hearing: How to Assess Taiwan’s Will to Fight.

Assessing Taiwan’s “Will to Fight”

“Will to fight” is a vague concept, and assessing it a hard thing to do rigorously. But we do have at least three kinds of data we can observe to give us some purchase on this question: public opinion, budgets, and willingness to serve in the military.

Public Opinion
The first is public opinion data. There are many surveys of defense and security-related issues conducted every year. I’m not going to go through them in detail, but simply note that when you look at the general patterns that appear consistent across surveys, they support four key observations.

First, Taiwanese on the whole are not very confident about their own military’s ability to defend the country—especially alone—against an attack by the PRC. There is a great deal of pessimism.

Second, they are generally much more confident in their fellow Taiwanese. About 2/3 – ¾ think most others would actively resist a PRC attack.  And, their own willingness to resist is closely correlated with their estimates of how many others also do so.

Third, the majority of Taiwanese – anywhere from 2/3 to ¾ -- indicate willingness to participate in the defense of Taiwan as long as the US is also involved. If the US is not involved, this share drops below half. So US participation in the defense of Taiwan has an important psychological and morale-boosting element as well as a practical one.

And fourth, the majority of Taiwanese remain confident that the United States would intervene to stop a PLA invasion, even if Taiwanese leaders themselves triggered an attack by declaring independence.

So, to sum up: if they believe the US will also be involved, most Taiwanese are willing to resist, and think most others will too. If they believe the US will not, then most will not. Beliefs about our presence is a critical variable in Taiwanese “will to fight.”

Defense Budgets
A second way to assess Taiwan’s “will to fight” is to look at defense budgets. Until recently, these data have suggested a half-hearted commitment to defending itself.

Starting in the mid-1990s, Taiwan’s defense budget in real terms flattened out for 20 years. It declined as a share of GDP from about 5% in 1994 to about 2% in 2016. Last year Taiwan spent in real terms roughly what it spent in 1994. Meanwhile, the PRC spent 25 times what it spent in 1994.

We all know that Taiwan cannot keep up with the PRC’s increases, which have generally been in proportion to GDP growth.

What is more striking is Taiwan’s relative decline even compared to other states in the region. For instance, in 1989, Taiwan spent about 2/3 of what SK spent. In 2020, it spent less than 1/3. Put bluntly, going by budgets, Taiwan looks like it’s shirking on defense.

However, this has changed significantly in the past four years. Taiwan’s announced defense budget has increased in local currency terms by about 40%: from 321 bn NTD in 2016, to 453 bn in 2021, and the share of the central government budget going to defense has climbed back to 20 percent, a level it has not been at since 1999.

That is at least a start and suggests that under President Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan is committing significantly more resources to its own defense.

Willingness to Serve in the Military
A third type of data we can use to assess this question is willingness to join the military. Here the patterns are not encouraging. In 2012, the Ma Ying-jeou administration approved a phase-out of conscription, to be replaced by an all-volunteer force. This transition has been repeatedly delayed, so that today, all adult able-bodied men are still required to serve four months—not enough time to learn much of use and develop into capable reserves.

The main reason is repeated shortfalls in recruiting. Put simply, most young Taiwanese have no interest in joining. And their brief time as conscripts does not change their minds. Most young people see the military as a path of last resort, only if they have no other options. So, we observe a contradiction: young Taiwanese are the most pro-Taiwan, anti-China, pro-democracy and pro-independence of any generation, but the vast majority would never consider volunteering to join the military.

This might be changing as a potential confrontation with the PRC looms larger, as the military threat becomes more salient—and as the military acquires new high-profile platforms. But this is an area that requires a great deal of work from the MND and civilian leadership to improve the public image of the military, and to strengthen Taiwan’s training and reserve system.

Recommendations

1. Strengthen the credibility of US commitment to Taiwan through NON-military ties. The ability to deter a Taiwan Strait crisis rests crucially on beliefs that the US would act to counter PRC coercion because it is in our own interests to do so.

That belief has weakened in Asia over the last four years, in part because the previous administration put up trade barriers and pulled out of the TPP. One way to reverse impressions that we will not be committed to Asia is to reengage in regional trade negotiations.

As one example, the USTR should open bilateral trade negotiations with Taiwan as soon as is feasible. Taiwan needs economic gestures of support as well as military ones, and bilateral trade talks would be a clear sign of deepening cooperation. If the Biden administration eventually decides to re-commit to negotiations for the CPTPP, use the leverage this opportunity offers to insist on Taiwan’s (and South Korea’s) participation in membership negotiations as well.

China's Military Incursions Around Taiwan Aren't a Sign of Imminent Attack

10/21/2020

Taiwan Ministry of National Defense figure illustrating PLA incursions into Taiwan's southwestern ADIZ on September 9-10, 2020.

China's recent military bravado in the Taiwan Strait represents the end state of a failed strategy

The drums of war are growing louder in the Taiwan Strait. In the last month, at least 50 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft have entered Taiwan’s airspace. The volume of threatening language directed at Taiwan from sources in China, both official and unofficial, has reached a crescendo, and the headlines in the news grow more alarming each month. In the United States, mainstream foreign policy voices are now openly debating whether the U.S. should abandon strategic ambiguity and openly commit to defend Taiwan in the case of an attack — an idea advocated not so long ago by only a radical fringe.

But these dire headlines are misleading: Beijing is not gearing up for an attack on Taiwan. It still has neither the capacity to launch a successful full-scale invasion, nor the motive to risk a conflict with the United States. In reality, the increasingly bellicose language coming from China is a sign of weakness, not strength, and a cover for the failure of its own Taiwan policy. Having thrown away most of its non-military leverage in a fruitless effort to compel Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to endorse its one China principle, Beijing has now been reduced to counter-productive saber-rattling to express its discontent at U.S. arms sales and high-level diplomatic visits, while Taiwan races to strengthen its own defenses and reorient its economy away from overdependence on mainland China. In short, Xi Jinping’s approach to the “Taiwan issue” has turned into a strategic fiasco — one that may take years for Beijing to recover from...

The rest of this commentary appears at The Diplomat.

How Successful is the Chinese Regime?

1/6/2018

My latest review essay, entitled "The China Model: How Successful is the Chinese Regime?" is now out at the Taiwan Journal of Democracy.

More on the themes of that piece below, but first, If you are a China-watcher, you really need to read Edward Wong's terrific new article in the New York Times, "A Chinese Empire Reborn." Wong was a China correspondent for the NYT for a decade, and he cuts through a lot of the crap about the nature of the Chinese regime. China's rise as a global power, he rightly notes, is occurring mostly through its accumulation of economic and military clout, rather than through emulation of its system and values by ordinary people and elites in other countries. That is, China's rise to date has been mostly about increasing its "hard", not "soft", power, and that order shows few signs of changing anytime soon.

There's one assumption in that essay that bothers me a bit, though. It's that the Chinese regime is inevitably going to continue its ascension in the world--that is, though it probably won't attract more admirers or imitators any time soon, China's relative hard power will continue its rapid increase. Here's the end of Wong's essay:

"Chinese citizens and the world would benefit if China turns out to be an empire whose power is based as much on ideas, values and culture as on military and economic might. It was more enlightened under its most glorious dynasties. But for now, the Communist Party embraces hard power and coercion, and this could well be what replaces the fading liberal hegemony of the United States on the global stage.

It will not lead to a grand vision of world order. Instead, before us looms a void."

What I question is Wong's implicit assumption that China will inevitably continue on an upward trajectory over the next several decades. It's true that the relative power of the United States is declining ("fading" is a bit strong, but we'll leave that aside for now), as it has been since its early post-Cold War peak. It's also true that the "liberal hegemony" of the current global order, and especially the capacity, and willingness, of the United States to maintain it, is under considerable short-term threat right now.

But it is not obvious to me that China is especially well-positioned to benefit from these trends, because it's not self-evident that its current economic expansion will continue much longer, or that Chinese leaders will be able to adapt very effectively to the challenges looming on the horizon. The Chinese economy has grown quickly over the last 35 years, but despite many assertions that China's growth record is unprecedented, it is not--over a similar time interval, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and before them Japan registered equally impressive growth, with a much more equal distribution of gains, to boot. And those earlier "economic miracles" followed a broadly similar pattern--a greater role for market forces, increasing connectivity to the global economy, export-oriented development, high savings rates, broad investment in education and infrastructure, but a continued privileged role for an activist state.

Here's the kicker: in all of those cases, the economy inevitably slowed down, and at the same time their "demographic dividends" also ended. The transition to a different growth model has been wrenching, and it's not clear that Japan, or South Korea, or Taiwan or Singapore has hit on the right balance of reforms--in particular, improved corporate governance, strengthened rule of law, and banking reforms--that would improve their long-term economic prospects. (Singapore has probably come the closest so far.) So why should we expect China to? On all these dimensions, China actually looks much worse than its Asian predecessors, and it has the added burden of a hugely unequal distribution of wealth and a political system that suffers from a grievous, long-term legitimacy deficit. (This leaves aside, too, the question of whether its reported GDP figures actually reflect anything close to reality.) It also is facing a dire demographic picture made worse by the One-Child Policy: its workforce-age population is already declining, and its total population is projected to begin falling in less than 20 years. That does not sound like a country destined for global hegemony to me.

For a more detailed discussion, check out my essay at the Taiwan Journal of Democracy.