US President Joe Biden’s tumultuous stint in Asia continued to reverberate on Wednesday, with China announcing it had held a military exercise near Taiwan as a “solemn warning against recent collusion between the United States” and the island it considers its .
The maneuver came a day after Russia and China launched their first joint patrol with nuclear-armed bombers in the Sea of Japan since the start of the Ukrainian War three months ago.
Four planes were in the air escorted by fighter jets, and accompanied by fighter planes from South Korea and Japan, for 13 hours. At the time, Biden was in Tokyo with Japanese, Indian and Australian leaders, his partners in the anti-China Quad group.
Despite the obviousness of the message, Tuesday’s episode (24) did not receive additional comments from Beijing or Moscow. As for the maneuvers of this Wednesday, yes, and carried out by the Command of the Oriental Theater of the People’s Liberation Army. “It is hypocritical and futile for the US to say one thing and do another on the Taiwan issue,” said spokesman Shi Yi.
The naval air exercise, which was not detailed, was “a solemn warning against recent US-Taiwan collusion,” he said. If Tuesday’s message broadened the scope of the issue, as the US and the Quad have been threatening China in case Beijing wants to emulate Moscow and attack Taiwan as Vladimir Putin did in Ukraine, now the address was focused.
This was Biden’s line on Monday, when he reaffirmed that he would militarily defend the island in the event of an invasion. Unlike Ukraine, a sovereign country since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Taiwan is seen by the Chinese as their own — despite the ambiguity, the US and virtually everyone else in the world agree on the theory.
The American president even tried to fix it the next day, after being accused of “playing with fire” by Beijing. Taiwan’s incorporation into the communist dictatorship is a pledge from leader Xi Jinping, who has escalated military activity around the island in the past two years to increase political pressure on the territory’s pro-independence groups.
In practice, analysts doubt it is more than a threat for two reasons. First, the possibility of actually bringing the US into a war, with the potential to destroy a reasonable Chinese invading fleet.
Second, the island’s military capabilities, which only have around 10% of their coastline permeable to troop landings. That and the mountainous terrain make it easier to defend, and would force China to use firepower incompatible with the idea that it is there to free the population from Taipei’s capitalists.
On the other hand, Beijing’s resolve appears ironclad. Xi has faced economic, administrative and political difficulties, which could lead to a previously unthinkable challenge to his plan to remain in power after his second term ends – that will be decided in November at the Communist Party congress.
It’s all speculation, given Xi’s degree of control over the country since coming to power ten years ago. In this field, however, even action against Taiwan could assert his position: authoritarian regimes love war, as China’s ally Putin and Argentina’s 1982 military junta in the Falklands prove.
Tuesday’s joint exercise, more than Wednesday’s demonstration, suggests that the distance Xi is trying to establish from the mess in Europe does not necessarily apply to the military relationship with Putin, with whom he sealed a friendship pact seen as a cornerstone of Cold War 2.0. against the US, 20 days before the bombs fell on Ukraine.
