Why China did not attack Taiwan?

For more than seven decades, China and Taiwan have avoided coming to military face-offs.

The two entities have been separated since 1949 following the civil wars in the 1940s. Taiwan considers itself a sovereign state. China, however, views Taiwan as a breakaway province, and has always maintained that the island should at some point be reclaimed. It has not ruled out the possible use of force to achieve unification.

Tensions with China are at their worst in 40 years, Taiwan’s Defence Minister said, warning of the risk of an accidental strike between the two. China scrambled Taiwan’s defence zone with a record number of fighter jets for four consecutive days earlier this month, triggering massive jitters of warmongering messaging.

The Taiwanese Defence Minister also warned that China would be capable of mounting a full-scale invasion of the island by 2025 while speaking at the parliamentary committee in Taipei, considering a multi-billion-dollar defence spending bill to build missiles and warships.

Lately, Beijing is becoming increasingly concerned that Taiwan’s government is moving the island towards a formal declaration of independence and wants to deter its President Tsai Ing-wen from taking any steps in that direction. However, US President Joe Biden has said that his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping had agreed to abide by the “Taiwan agreement”.

On October 12, the People’s Liberation Army Daily published an article titled ‘The historical task of the complete reunification of the Motherland must be realised’, based on Xi’s speech to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the Revolution of 1911.

The article stated that President Xi’s speech revealed the historical trend of the reunification of the motherland and national rejuvenation.

“The historical task of the complete reunification of the Motherland must be realised and will certainly be realised.”

It is an inevitable requirement for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation in the new era and the sacred mission of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The Chinese PLA has firm will, full confidence, and sufficient ability to thwart all external forces interference and separatist acts of “Taiwan independence”, and resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity, the article said.

Recently, the Communist party media released a military drill video revealing preparations towards going into war with Taiwan. Is CCP intensively preparing for the plan to attack Taiwan ahead of the schedule?

Revealing the true intention of the Chinese design, on 12 October, Epoch Times published an exclusive internal document of the Chinese Communist Party, which is closely related to the recent tension on the Taiwan issue.

According to the report, the document was issued by the National Defense Mobilization Committee of Hui’an County, Quanzhou, Fujian Province, on January 2, 2020, informing the party offices and government departments to survey the local national defence mobilisation potential. The document shows that the survey statistics are in accordance with the needs of military struggle preparations related to achieve efficient participation in war and support operations. The Committee also requested that statistics “must not be subject to errors and omissions”.

Analysts believe that it proves that the authorities are speeding up the pace and bringing China into a state of war to deal with the upcoming war in Taiwan. It also revealed that the CCP originally decided to launch the war in the Taiwan Strait after the 20th National Congress, i.e., from 2023 to 2024, the last leg of Biden’s first term.

But the withdrawal of the US military from Afghanistan has upset the Chinese military calculations. Xi Jinping’s aides believe that the US military is inherently vulnerable, and the Biden administration does not dare to fight the CCP. However, the fast-moving scenario panning out in the Indo-Pacific region to counter China has its bearing on CCP’s strategy.

The announcement of the establishment of AUKUS tripartite security agreement between the United States, Great Britain and Australia and the military exercise held by the ‘Quartet Security Dialogue’ (QUAD) countries comprising the US, Japan, India and Australia in the region symbolise that the alliance to curb the CCP’s aggression is developing steadily.

Therefore, Xi was compelled to pay more attention to the developing situation. In other words, the CCP may have advanced the time of the war in the Taiwan Strait.