In this edited extract from The China Tightrope, a new book on the New Zealand-China relationship out this week, Newsroom's own Sam Sachdeva writes about the prospects of a war involving the Asian superpower - and what that would mean for Aotearoa
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stretched into its sixth month, an American congresswoman’s flying visit to Asia might have seemed the least of the world’s worries. But Nancy Pelosi is no ordinary politician, and her trip to Taiwan in August 2022 was no ordinary event.
As the Speaker of the US House of Representatives - second in line to the country’s presidency, behind only the vice-president - Pelosi became the most senior American representative to visit the island since Newt Gingrich over 25 years ago.
Gingrich’s 1997 trip came at a time of reduced US–China tensions, and with the approval of Beijing; the former Speaker of the House visited mainland China before heading to Taiwan, with a detour to Japan in between as an apparent nod to diplomatic protocol. Pelosi observed no such niceties, flying into Taipei in the face of the Chinese government warning it would not ‘sit idly by’ in the event of such a trip.
Her visit lasted barely 24 hours but Beijing showed its threat was far from idle. Immediately after Pelosi returned to the US, China’s military began a series of live-fire drills in the skies and waters surrounding Taiwan, barely 15 kilometres from its coastline at some points. Four days of exercises finished without significant incident, but the Chinese government had made its point to the US - and to the wider world.
Even as the CCP steadily expands the number of topics it regards as off limits to foreign criticism or intervention, Taiwan looms largest as the potential catalyst for a conflict with disastrous results. ‘As far as China is concerned, there is no red line redder than the Taiwan question,’ diplomat Wang Xiaolong warned during a speech to mark the fiftieth anniversary of New Zealand– China relations in 2021.
Why does China care so deeply about the status of an offshore neighbour whose diplomatic influence has dwindled so markedly in recent decades? At one level, says New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre director Jason Young, it’s a simple matter of unfinished business dating back to the CCP’s victory over the Kuomintang in 1949. “The nationalists lost the civil war and the communists won the civil war, and they therefore viewed the spoils of victory being the whole of what the Qing dynasty used to be at one point.”
At a deeper level, Young says, Taiwan’s mere existence threatens the Chinese regime’s sense of legitimacy, showing there’s a viable alternative to authoritarian rule on the mainland. As a multi-party democracy with a strong civil society, a free media, an independent judiciary and strong relations with the West, Taiwan is everything modern China is not.
The sensitivity around the status of Taiwan is far from new. As a young New Zealand diplomat posted to China in the 1970s, Christopher Elder would see the same slogan painted on every second barn as he moved around the country: “Yi ding yao jie fang Taiwan” - “We must liberate Taiwan”.
But the matter seemed to become more pressing to the CCP when the pro-democracy Democratic Progressive Party returned to power in Taiwan’s 2016 elections. The new president, Tsai Ing-wen, did not accept the validity of the 1992 Consensus, a supposed agreement between Chinese and Taiwanese representatives setting out the guidelines for relations across the Taiwan Strait whose legitimacy is hotly contested. Tsai has also rejected the Chinese ‘one country, two systems’ approach to Taiwan - an unsurprising decision, given that she need only look at the situation in Hong Kong to see how flimsy such promises can be.
Chinese rhetoric has hardened in response. In a white paper issued in the wake of Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, the CCP said the complete reunification of China was “indispensable for the realisation of China’s rejuvenation”, with a greater sense of urgency than ever before. “We should not allow this problem to be passed down from one generation to the next.” The document emphasised the importance of peaceful reunification, but with a crucial caveat: “We will not renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures.”
Such chest beating has raised fears that China may look to reclaim Taiwan by force sooner rather than later. In late 2022 US Navy chief Mike Gilday suggested an invasion could take place within less than two years, a drastically shorter timeline than most had previously believed. Not everyone is convinced military action is imminent, however. US Asia expert Bonnie Glaser says: “I don’t rule it out, but I think that China has many other priorities, and it is confident Taiwan cannot declare independence...whereas promoting reunification is more of a longer-term project for Xi Jinping.”
There are also question marks over whether China has the military capability to mount a full-scale invasion of Taiwan. To succeed, says former Australian intelligence analyst Sam Roggeveen, the PLA would need to cross the 180-kilometre-wide Taiwan Strait - an open body of water where it would be highly vulnerable to attack - before landing on a small number of well-defended beaches and making their way inland. While possible in theory, it would be extraordinarily difficult to pull off in the real world.
A more plausible scenario may be a blockade of Taiwan, cutting off the island with ships and submarines and patrolling the skies to prevent any aerial incursions. By cutting off access to essential supplies, some experts say, the Chinese government may be able to slowly ramp up pressure on Taiwan before moving to a full-blown conflict if the circumstances allowed.
Yet another possibility, Roggeveen says, is the continuation of Beijing’s current ‘salami-slicing’ tactics: a series of small but increasingly restrictive actions such as 2022’s live-fire drills which, over time, push Taiwan into an impossible situation. The world would come to take that as the new baseline, he says, with China “slowly creeping towards a situation in which it becomes much more difficult for Taiwan to defend itself, as these things become more normalised and accepted”.
While there is significant uncertainty over how China will press its claim to Taiwan in the coming years, there is less doubt about what would happen in the event of a full-scale war. It would be “devastating and totally horrific in almost every possible metric that we could quantify it”, says American academic Charles Edel. “Enormous loss of life, trade disruptions that we haven’t seen in 80 to 90 years.”
A significant number of casualties would be all but certain, along with major economic costs: half of the world’s entire fleet of container ships passed through the Taiwan Strait in the first half of 2022, making the waterway crucial to the free flow of global trade. According to the Financial Times, the US State Department has estimated that a Chinese blockade of Taiwan would cause roughly US$2.5 trillion in annual losses for the global economy. The economic disruption caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine - hardly trivial in isolation - would “look like a scuffle in a playground” by comparison, says Centre for Strategic Studies director David Capie.
“I said, ‘Do you know that Māori DNA brings us to China? My leader [Winston Peters] once said that Māori were Chinese and got laughed at by our media and our country, and then years later the DNA analysis proved he was right, Māori do come from China - from Taiwan...He said, ‘Oh really?’ And I said, ‘So that’s my airspace too.’” - Defence Minister Ron Mark, on the South China Sea
It’s not just Taiwan where China’s attempts to exert control carry the risk of military conflict. The country’s efforts to claim ownership of disputed territory in the South China Sea have become increasingly concerning, both for its Asian neighbours asserting their own territorial rights and other nations that rely on safe passage through the area.
Beijing’s notorious ‘nine-dash line’, marking out what it believes is its rightful territory, stretches out from the mainland and skirts along the coastlines of Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines (the line is sometimes known as a ‘cow’s tongue’, due to its shape). In 2016 an international tribunal in The Hague dismissed the bulk of China’s claims in a stinging defeat, saying there was no evidence the country had maintained exclusive control over the waters in the past.
The ruling did little to deter Beijing, however. Not only has it continued to build artificial islands in the area, it has also placed an array of military assets on several reefs, including anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems as well as fighter jets. During a visit to the area in early 2022, US Indo- Pacific commander Admiral John C. Aquilino told the Associated Press that Chinese infrastructure in the region was part of “the largest military buildup since World War II”.
When former defence minister Ron Mark first met his Chinese counterpart, General Wei Fenghe, the nine-dash line was the first topic the general brought up. Wei had apparently taken issue with New Zealand’s role in monitoring North Korea’s compliance with UN sanctions, sending surveillance aircraft on patrols that traversed the disputed area. In response, Mark made what must be one of the more audacious attempts at a territorial grab in our country’s history.
“I said, ‘Do you know that Māori DNA brings us to China? My leader [Winston Peters] once said that Māori were Chinese and got laughed at by our media and our country, and then years later the DNA analysis proved he was right, Māori do come from China - from Taiwan...He said, ‘Oh really?’ And I said, ‘So that’s my airspace too.’”
Thankfully, the result was not a barrage of missiles aimed towards Wellington but - after a pause as the translator relayed the message - a bout of raucous laughter. “I stood up and we finished the bilateral [meeting] right then and there: shook hands, man-hug, laughing, finished discussion, and he never raised it again.”
Of course there is a more serious side to China’s attempts to control the movement of aircraft and ships in the area. There have been a number of near-misses between US and Chinese warships as the Americans carry out freedom-of-navigation patrols to assert their right to travel through international waters, and the Chinese in turn seek to drive foreign vessels out of the territory. In 2018 a Chinese warship came within 50 metres of a US Navy destroyer as it travelled through the South China Sea, forcing a swift change of tack to avoid a collision.
Western aircraft that fly through the area are not exempt from Chinese intervention either. In mid-2022 a Chinese fighter jet pulled alongside an Australian surveillance plane carrying out routine work in international airspace near the South China Sea, releasing flares and chaff (small pieces of aluminium) that entered one of the Australian plane’s engines.
Other countries have reported similar attempts at intimidation. New Zealand has never officially confirmed receiving such treatment on its own surveillance missions, but Mark confirms that it has. ‘Australia is not unique, let’s put it that way...it’s happened [to us as well].’ Such brinkmanship from the Chinese - or from any nation, for that matter - runs the risk of an accidental collision, with disastrous consequences. But there’s an important principle at stake, Mark says, and one that New Zealand must play a role in protecting.
“There are many places where our people walk a very fine line, and where miscalculation can result in tragedy, but nothing our people have ever done has been illegal or outside of international law, and that’s the point…
“You can’t just redraw the map to suit your bloody self against all the international laws, which is what China did, and the moment you acquiesce to that, they move the line again.”
For all that China’s actions give grounds for concern, it’s important to keep fear-mongering about an imminent war in perspective. While China has invested significant sums into its military as part of Xi Jinping’s vision of having a ‘world-class’ military by 2049, there are unknowns about how it would hold up in the heat of battle. The PLA has never been tested, Ron Mark says, with limited involvement in peacekeeping and other military missions. Size does bring its own advantages, Mark concedes, but question marks remain over whether the Chinese could make full use of their battery of equipment.
Then there’s the matter of whether Xi would even want to put his military to use, given the plethora of domestic and foreign policy considerations already occupying his attention. With a slowing economy, declining population growth and the Covid-19 challenge, there is more than enough to keep the Chinese leadership busy without launching into an unnecessary war, says former American diplomat Ford Hart. “I don’t think we’re close to World War III - not because I think Beijing is a bunch of patsies and soft-hearted people...[but] because by a reading of their cost-benefit analysis, they have so much other stuff out there. Xi doesn’t get up every morning and say, ‘How do I conquer Taiwan?’”
“There’s no way you stay out of the war: there’s no way I can imagine you [could]. From a moral perspective, if 24 million peaceful, progressive, democratic, non-threatening people are subjected to brutal attack and then the suppression of their freedoms, what does that say for New Zealand’s principles-based foreign policy? Not much.” - Ford Hart, former American diplomat
With China’s drive towards economic prosperity still Xi’s top priority, Murray McCully agrees that there are plenty of reasons for him to shy away from an expensive conflict. “At the end of the day, China depends on the stability of the region to achieve those [trade] numbers it needs to deliver to keep its population happy. There’s a sort of a trade-off: people in China put up with things we wouldn’t put up with in terms of personal liberties, because they have been able to achieve significant economic benefits for millions of people. When those benefits stop flying, the equation changes dramatically.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the international community’s response, may also have introduced an additional level of caution into Chinese planning. While Vladimir Putin probably anticipated his military steamrolling their way into Kyiv, the reality proved quite different: after initial Russian incursions the Ukrainian forces claimed back large swathes of their territory with the support of a broad coalition of countries, and Putin’s compatriots grew increasingly bitter as casualties rose and global sanctions took their toll. The two sides remain locked in a stalemate with a pathway to peace far from clear.
As with the war in Ukraine, any conflict in Taiwan or the South China Sea would be sufficiently remote for New Zealanders not to worry about any direct physical threat. “Despite China’s growing capabilities, we remain a long way away...in crude terms, Beijing is closer to Berlin than it is to Sydney,” Sam Roggeveen says. But of course New Zealand would be unable to avoid the broader effects of a war. For this small country at the bottom of the world, heavily reliant on global freight networks, the disruption caused by any conflict in the wider Asia–Pacific region could wreak catastrophic economic damage.
Then there is the awkward diplomatic position the country would face: unable to sit on the fence with both the US and China demanding support. “There’s no way you stay out of the war: there’s no way I can imagine you [could],” Hart says. “From a moral perspective, if 24 million peaceful, progressive, democratic, non-threatening people are subjected to brutal attack and then the suppression of their freedoms, what does that say for New Zealand’s principles-based foreign policy? Not much.”
It is that issue, of principles versus pragmatism, that underlies so much of the debate about New Zealand’s relationship with China. Thanks primarily to China’s actions, it seems a balance that is increasingly difficult to maintain.
Taken with kind permission from the newly published The China Tightrope: Navigating New Zealand’s relationship with a world superpower by Sam Sachdeva (Allen & Unwin, $36.99), available in bookstores nationwide.
