DEFENCE Chinese air power and Taiwan

Balance of power

As escalating tensions between China and Taiwan threaten to spark a wider conflict, TIM ROBINSON FRAeS considers the changing air power and geostrategic balance between China and the West.

US Navy Super Hornets and USMC and UK F-35Bs overfly the CSG21 carrier strike group in the Phillippine Sea in early October with HMS Queen Elizabeth joined by the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force helicopter carrier JS Ise and the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Carl Vinson. US Navy

In 1914 a single shot in Sarajevo plunged the world into a terrible conflict, sparking a global war that left millions dead and that set the conditions for another devastating conflict in 1939. A highly globalised and interdependent economic system was rent asunder – with what some described as a slow-motion catastrophe in which train timetables, mobilisation schedules and alliances contributed to an inevitable drift to war.

Fast-forward to 2021 and there are growing concerns that once again the world is slowly sleepwalking into another large-scale international conflict – this time over the island of Taiwan and Beijing’s ambitions to reunify it into mainland China – which would threaten to draw in the US and allies.

In recent years, relations between China and the West have deteriorated sharply through issues, such as Huawei, ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy, a crackdown in Hong Kong and the treatment of the Uyghur minority. The final straw in some critics’ eyes, was the coronavirus pandemic, its origin in Wuhan – with the delay in communicating the severity of Covid-19 to the outside world, costing lives.

Beijing argues that others are seeking to restrict and hobble its rise as a 21st Century superpower, with the centre of gravity in the world inexorably shifting to Asia-Pacific in technology, economic and military power. For example, Huawei, it might be argued, simply copied previous Western success in information technology by investing heavily in R&D and retaining its IP, only to have the US and Europe suddenly pull up the drawbridge. China also points out that it has accomplished its rise through peaceful means and economic soft power, rather than in foreign interventions that have characterised Western foreign policy in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The news that China had been the first to cement ties with the new Taliban regime in Afghanistan, after US and NATO nations withdrew, was thus seen as confirming this seismic shift of power eastwards.

Today, the risk of invasion of Taiwan is now seen as higher than ever, as China’s new-found military strength has closed the gap between it and the US.

Aerial probing​

For Taiwan, this year has seen a record number of aerial probes into its ADIZ (Air Defence Identification Zone) by Chinese PLAAF aircraft, including a surge of sorties in early October that, on one occasion, saw 52 aircraft penetrate this zone and a 28% increase over September’s total. This followed earlier incursions by half as many aircraft over the summer. The formations have consisted of fighters, such as J-16 and J-11, H-6 bombers and KJ-500 AEW platforms, making for a combined potent strike force.

PLAAF KJ-500 AEW aircraft intercepted in the Taiwan ADIZ in early October. Taiwan MND

While a country’s ADIZ is not considered sovereign airspace and spyplanes probing other nation’s reaction times and defences have been a feature since the start of the Cold War, mass incursions like this have raised fears that, as well as being provocative acts by themselves, the increasing numbers are conditioning Taiwanese defenders to accept larger strike forces that may one day turn hostile. For Beijing’s part, it has said that the incursions were due to the US provocations, such as arms sales to Taipei and its warships transiting the Tawain Strait under FONOP (Freedom of Naval Operations) rules.

Has China won the AI war?

Yet for its part, China has closely studied the US way of war over the past three decades and the way in which air power gives it the decisive advantage. For example, its A2/D2 ‘bubble’ has the effect of pushing US assets and the critical non-stealth enablers, such as tankers, AEW and ISR aircraft, further away – reducing the range and time on station of tactical combat aircraft. Meanwhile, scores of missiles would target key US bases, such as Guam, where concentrations of American airpower – particularly where these force multipliers above – would make for tempting and vulnerable targets.

Cyber attacks would also likely precede any such surprise attack, causing disruption and chaos and slowing any response from Washington. There is evidence that Beijing has conducted a major cyber-espionage campaign against the US, with hacking hoovering up astonishing amounts of data – with one estimate that China now has personal identifiable infomation on 80% of US citizens.

China is also racing ahead in AI – with one US defence official recently resigning in protest over the slow pace of AI and software development by the US military – saying that, at the moment, China has already won. This is despite US efforts to field a next-generation ‘combat cloud’ network architecture which would use AI to speed up the sensor-to-shooter kill chain.

Summary

There are thus worrying signs. Language is becoming increasingly bellicose and it is known that premier Xi Jinping hopes to reunify Taiwan with mainland China within his presidency. Second, is that there is now a ticking clock in that the US, distracted by Afghanistan and Iraq over the past 20 years, has now woken up and is reorienting to face this challenge, with investments in more ships, hypersonics and high-speed distributed warfare. For Beijing, the window of a successful attempt to keep the US at bay over a Taiwan invasion or blockade may be closing – it may be that it is approaching the peak of its military capability, versus the might of American air and sea power now looking in its direction. There are also internal factors at play here, with China currently undergoing its own LehmanBrothers-style financial meltdown in the property market. That could make it attractive for the CCP to distract its populace by engineering an external crisis with foreign enemies.

Despite the rhetoric, there are reasons for optimism. The first is still the interconnectedness of the modern global economy which has demonstrated through the Covid-19 pandemic how reliant countries are on each other – despite attempts to decouple economies and supply chains. Shortages of port workers in China, for example, has lead to production slowdowns in the US car industry, due to a lack of computer chips. China, too will have to keep these in mind;– it will be aware that even a successful invasion would cast it as a pariah and do untold economic damage.

Meanwhile, its ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy has somewhat backfired and succeeded in hardening attitudes and pushing nations together, for example with AUKUS – suggesting that a return to a more nuanced approach may be more successful.

An invasion of Taiwan too, with it being the world centre for semiconductor computer chips, would also expand any reunification attempt from purely wrapping up loose ends from the 1949 Chinese civil war into a China vs the US, allies and even the rest of the world.

Like Saddam Hussein’s ill-advised invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that threatened the global oil supply over the border in Saudi Arabia, would the rest of the world be able to stand aside when this strategic resource that underpins our modern digital age comes under threat?