Morning Wire - China “Ready to Fight” Taiwan | Sunday Extra

Episode Date: April 16, 2023

The Chinese military conducted military exercises around the island of Taiwan last week after a group of bipartisan lawmakers met with Taiwan’s president. How likely is China to invade Taiwan? What would that invasion consist of? And how would the U.S. react? We pose these questions to Deputy Editor of the Asia Times, and Claremont Fellow David Goldman. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.   AD: Birch Gold: No-Cost, No-Obligation FREE Information Kit Text “WIRE"" to 989898   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last week, the Chinese military spent three days simulating positions in which they surround the island of Taiwan. The move comes after Taiwan's president met with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California. Chinese officials have said the drills were intended to be a serious warning to pro-independence politicians on the island and their foreign supporters. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's April 16th, and this is a Sunday extra edition of Morning Wire. Are you concerned about the future of your finances and looking for a reliable investment option? Look no further than Birch Gold. Gold is a tangible asset with a reliable store of value because it's not tied to any one economy or currency.

And it can be a safe haven in times of crisis. Birch Gold will help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into an IRA and physical precious metals. Text Wire to 98989898 to get your free info kit on gold today. That's Wire to 989898 today. Joining us to discuss is Deputy Editor of Asia Times and Claremont Fellow David Goldman. David, thanks for coming on. My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

Now, last week, China's military declared that it's, quote, ready to fight. What does that mean and what does it mean for Taiwan's security? Well, the Chinese used to deployed close to 100 military aircraft and a couple of dozen Navy ships to simulate a embargo with the island. They could, in fact, successfully shut down the Taiwanese economy, but that's only a tiny proportion of the forces they have available. The most important military capability China has on its coast are about 2,000 surface-to-ship missiles, which, with a very deep satellite network,

can do precision targeting of naval vessels and surface vessels out into the Western Pacific, well over 1,000 miles from its coasts, coast. Here I'm quoting a November 29th military assessment by the Pentagon, which is available to the public. They also have a very large number of so-called loitering munitions. That's like the loitering drones we've seen used in Ukraine. So the Air Force and the Navy of China would be a relatively small part of their firepower if, God forbid, we actually got into a shooting war. they would saturate the island with missile attacks

and destroy whichever targets they chose. If China were to attack Taiwan, what would that actually look like? Well, it depends what you mean by attack. The Center for Strategic and International Studies in January published a war game, which assumed that China would send, you know, 20,000 soldiers in boats, Normandy invasion style, to the Tamanese coast,

and that the Tamanese would go down to the beach and fight to the death. in that case, they concluded the United States would lose half its air force, several aircraft carriers, a great deal of its military assets, but the Chinese invasion would fail. I think that scenario is actually extremely unrealistic. Much more likely is that China would use its combination of navy, missile forces, and air force to blockade Taiwan and try to starve Taiwan in a suburb. There are many great unknowns in this, and one is, will the Taiwanese fight China?

Will they be Ukraine and take massive casualties in orders to maintain their independence, or will they decide that it's better to be red than dead? That's something that we really don't want to find out. We don't know. So it's hard to know what that would look like. I think all the war games make assumptions which look too much like World War II and not like what might actually happen in the Taiwan Straits and the unfortunate event of a shooting war.

Now, the U.S. just completed some military exercises with the Philippines. Are both the U.S. and China saber-rattling here, or is there actual reason for concern this time? Well, there is reason for concern because this is the kind of situation where you could get a military confrontation, although both sides are cautious about it. If the Chinese really believe that Taiwan is aiming for independence and the United States has abandoned the one China policy,

I think it's extremely likely that China will take military action because for the Chinese Communist Party, the territorial integrity of China is an existential issue. The Chinese believe with some reason that if one renegade province can break away from China, many others can. China is not a nation state, but a multicultural, multi-ethnic empire, which is always in danger of breakup. And of course, Chinese history is full of dynocies, which were overthrown by a combination of local sessitists and foreign intervention. So that is a hot button for the Chinese. So, yes, it is a dangerous situation inherently, but nothing in the present situation looks like a war.

On the contrary, it really does look like saber-attling in the short term. Now, would you say that we are already in a Cold War with China and or with Russia? Well, we're in more than a Cold War with Russia. We're in something of a hot war. We know from the leaks of Defense Department documents, which have been circulating on the Internet and the major media for the last week that the United States and its allies are deeply involved in the Ukraine war on the Ukrainian side, not in on-the-ground fighting, but certainly in intelligence, in targeting, in communications, and so forth. We are in a Cold War with China. We've imposed a density of sanctions on their

tech sector, particularly on semiconductors, which persuade the Chinese that we really wish to stifle their economic development and that China requires a top-down all-country mobilization to try to compensate for that. So yes, it is a Cold War with China. I do not believe that either side right now really wants a hot war. The United States knows that the cost of a military engagement with a China that's been massively building up missile, aircraft, submarine, and other capability on its coast would be horrendously. costly, and there's a significant probability that we would lose such a confrontation. We don't have any defense, for example, against a weapon system called a hypervelocity cruise

missiles, against which there is really no defense, and one of which could probably take out an American carrier. The Chinese don't want a war because even if they want it, the long-term costs would be staggering. We would boycott their shipping. We'd boycott their goods. Their economy would go into free fall. the world economy would go into depression, and that would not be good for the longevity of the Chinese Communist Party.

So I think both sides have a reason to avoid a confrontation in the near term. And I would add, it's very interesting, markets in Asia didn't flutter, not just the level, say, of stock prices, but even, say, the hedging costs of stock prices didn't move at all. So if the markets are any indication, nobody thinks that this is the big one or close to it. Recently, China's been making some economic alliances with Russia, as well as with Iran, specifically trying to box out the U.S. dollar. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, China has been using its soft power, particularly its export prowess and its expertise in digital and physical infrastructure to win friends and influence people throughout Eurasia. It has carefully avoided explicitly flouting American sanctions on Russia, but indirectly through many intermediaries, Chinese goods, for example, the computer ships which are necessary for many Russian weapons systems, are fond of their way to Russia in large volume. Chinese exports have more than to Russia have more than doubled in the past year, according to China's own data, and a very large amount of Chinese exports are going to Russia. The fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia went to China to conclude a reconciliation is a major victory for Chinese diplomacy, and we should expect more. I think we underestimate how effective China's soft power is. China's exports to the so-called global South have doubled in the past three years, and China is happily building digital and physical and physical. infrastructure all over Southeast Asia. So that gives them a huge amount of power.

Now, China, because of America's sanctions against Ukraine, there's an incentive to get around American control payments mechanisms, and also there's an incentive for countries like Saudi Arabia and others to hold more of their reserves in a place where the United States could not get at them in the event that there were some kind of conflict. So the Saudis are hedging against the remote possibility of American sanctions or reserve seizures by putting more money in R&B.

And they're denominating some of their oil trade in R&B. The Brazilians are also denominating their trade with China in R&B in Brazilian real. So there has been at the margin a move away from the dollar. But I think this is mainly a reaction to American sanctions and American efforts to weaponize the dollar against Russia and not so much a result of incentives the Chinese might have to make their currency more usable internationally. Actually, a lot of reason not to use the R&B. It's a lot more expensive, and you've got cumbersome exchange controls.

All right, well, David, thanks so much for coming on today. That was David Goldman, Deputy Samp. editor of Asia Times and Claremontfellow. And this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.