06-27-2021, 09:16 PM
*** 28-Jun-21 World View -- Japan's plans for defending Taiwan from an attack by China
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
****
**** Japan's relations with Taiwan
****
![[Image: g210627b.jpg]](http://Media.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g210627b.jpg)
Japan's Self-Defense Forces (KYODO)
When we discuss China's planned invasion of Taiwan, we generally
(tacitly) assume that the US will be Taiwan's only foreign defender.
While it's not clear how South Korea, Vietnam, Australia or India
might react to China's invasion of Taiwan, Japan has been discussing
how it would react, in increasingly explicit terms.
Taiwan was a colony of Japan, thanks to the Treaty of Shimonoseki,
signed by Japan and China on April 17, 1895, after Japan's victory in
the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95. China ceded Taiwan to Japan as a
result of that treaty, and Japan controlled Taiwan until Japan was
defeated in 1945. Japan's colonization of Taiwan was harsh, but there
were numerous economic benefits to Taiwan, and improvement in living
standards. When Japan declared war on China in 1937, Taiwan was an
ally of Japan against their common enemy, China.
After WW II, Taiwan and Japan had cordial relations, but there was
little talk of joint security and defense planning, since Japan had
adopted its "Pacifist Constitution," which made it illegal for Japan
to deploy armed forces for any reason other than to defend an attack
on Japanese soil.
****
**** Defending Taiwan as 'collective self-defense'
****
Finally in 2015, Japan reinterpreted the constitution to permit
"collective self-defense," which would permit Japanese military forces
to deploy armed forces for an attack on an ally, such as the United
States. (See "5-May-14 World View -- Japan debates 'collective self-defense' to protect America and Japan"
for a detailed explanation of what was adopted in
2015.)
So a commitment to defend Taiwan from an invasion by China is not a
simple thing as it would be in other countries, especially since the
pacifist constitution is very popular among the Japanese people, who
are still trying to figure out why they acted as they did in WW II.
But the increasily belligerent threats from China are forcing
the Japanese to look for a solution.
So with that reinterpretation of the Constitution, Japanese government
officials are considering two possible paths by which they could
militarily support the United States after a Chinese invasion of
Taiwan.
****
**** Is Taiwan a 'nation'?
****
In a debate on Covid-19 in parliament earlier this month, Japan's
prime minister Yoshihide Suga referred to Australia, New Zealand and
Taiwan and said, "These three countries have been imposing strong
restrictions on privacy rights" to curb the virus outbreak.
It's not known whether this was a slip or was intentional, but it drew
the usual hysterical complaint from China's Foreign Ministry: "China
expresses strong dissatisfaction with Japan's erroneous remarks and
has lodged a solemn protest against Japan."
China claims Taiwan as a province of China, and has repeatedly said
that they will invade Taiwan at a time of their choosing to force
Taiwan to be part of China. As a result, both the United States and
Japan have adopted a policy of "strategic ambiguity," in order to
encourage both China and Taiwan to continue thinking that the issue
can be resolved in time peacefully (which, of course, it cannot). In
particular, the US has not committed to defending Taiwan, but is
providing weapons to Taiwan for its own self-defense.
For decades, this strategic ambiguity has been debated in Washington
and Tokyo. But now, with the growing military might of China and its
growing belligerence, there is pressure on both the US and Japan to
abandon strategic ambiguity and commit to defending Taiwan in case of
attack.
These discussions are in process, and it's possible that something
will be decided within a few months, or not.
****
**** China's plan for invading Taiwan
****
According to an analysis by Ian Easton, senior director at the Project
2049 Institute, China is preparing for an all-out invasion within five
to ten years.
He says that Beijing’s optimistic version of events goes something
like this:
Easton says that Taiwan has been preparing for just such an attack by
fortifying defenses around key landing points and conducting drills to
repel Chinese forces.
****
**** Japan provides vaccines to Taiwan
****
China has blocked Taiwan from getting doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
The Pfizer vaccine was co-developed by the German company BioNTech.
Taiwan was negotiating with Pfizer to get the vaccine, but China was
able to delay the deal indefinitely by pressuring BioNTech and the
German government. The Chinese claim that they had offered to sell
their vaccine to Taiwan, but Taiwanese law bans Chinese-made medical
products, including vaccines.
So earlier this month, Japan delivered 1.24 million doses of
AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to Japan. The Japanese foreign
ministry said that that Japan was responding to a Taiwanese request,
and that the donation reflects “Japan’s important partnership and
friendship with Taiwan.”
On Friday, Japan it would send 2 million additional doses of
AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan and Vietnam, and arrangements
were being made to send 1 million doses each to Thailand, Malaysia,
Indonesia and the Philippines.
In addition, the United States recently shipped 2.5 million vaccine
does to Taiwan. Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu tweeted, “The
Taiwan-U.S. relationship is rock solid, & we’ll keep cooperating
closely in combating COVID19. Forces for good will prevail!”
****
**** Instability of the Chinese Communist Party
****
Analysts who talk about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan usually provide a
time frame of five to ten years. That's pretty much what they have to
say, isn't it.
But any such timeline assumes that the Chinese Communists are pursuing
rational policies. As I've written in the past, crisis wars begin
with a chaotic unexpected event. WW I began because a 12-year-old
decided to shoot an Archduke in 1914. WW II began because a Japanese
soldier had to pee and got lost in the woods in 1937. Those wars were
a complete surprise, even to the belligerents. That's how WW III will
begin. It will be totally irrational and unexpected, and it could
happen any day.
A lot depends on the stability of the CCP government, and I've argued
in the past that any dictatorship is fatally flawed and unstable,
especially as compared to the US Constitutional government, with its
federal system of checks and balances. The problem is that when a
dictator does something really stupid, there's no one there to stop
him, and anyone who tries is executed. This was true, for example, of
Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward (1958-59), which was possibly the
stupidest policy of any country in the history of the world, killing
tens of millions of innocent people for no reason at all, destroying
China's economy for decades.
So now we have Xi Jinping in that same position of dictator. If he
appears weak, he'll be replaced. So he has to be strong, and if he
makes a stupid decision, as Mao did, there will be no one to stop him,
and the result will be disaster.
Xi reached the position of dictator by a brutal anticorruption
campaign, begun in 2012, which targeted some two million officials in
the Chinese Communist Party. This was popular with many Chinese, but
alienated may elites.
****
**** China's Dong Jingwei defects to the United States
****
Xi Jinping is facing many problems. Domestic problems include income
inequality, environmental threats, land grabs, food safety, Air
pollution, water scarcity, and soil contamination. In addition,
China’s aging population means that more retirees are supported by
fewer young people.
Internationally, China is facing criticism about its brutal crackdown
on the free press in Hong Kong, China's arrest and enslavement of
millions of Uighurs, and illegal belligerent actions in the South
China Sea. The Chinese Communists have made it abundantly clear that
they don't care at all what others think of them, and what
international laws they violate. What we're seeing is the
millennia-old Chinese culture saying that the rest of the world are
barbarians, and are to be treated as donkeys, with no purpose except
to serve the Chinese Communists.
On top of all this, there have been reports that Xi Jinping and CCP
officials have been shocked at the defection in February of Dong
Jingwei and his daughter to the United States. Dong is China's Vice
Minister of State Security in the Chinese Ministry of Defense. He is
perhaps the highest-level Chinese defector the U.S. has ever had.
He is reported to be providing informtion about the identity of all
the Chinese spies in the US, and methods used by the Chinese to
infiltrate the US government, businesses and universities.
According to a report from Taiwan, this defection has triggered
factional fights within the CCP leading to a period of unprecedented
instability not seen since the Cultural Revolution.
The point of mentioning all this in an article on Japan's plans to
defend Taiwan from Chinese invasion is that the invasion could occur
at any time -- maybe in the 5-10 years as predicted by the analysts,
but possibly much sooner than that with an overwhelmed dictator Xi
Jinping in charge, and the possibiity that he'll order some military
action in the Taiwan Strait to deflect from his personal or political
problems.
Sources:
Related Articles:
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Japan, Taiwan, China, Xi Jinping, Dong Jingwei,
Treaty of Shimonoseki, collective self-defense, Okinawa island,
Yoshihide Suga, Ian Easton, Pfizer, BioNTech
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Japan's relations with Taiwan
- Defending Taiwan as 'collective self-defense'
- Is Taiwan a 'nation'?
- China's plan for invading Taiwan
- Japan provides vaccines to Taiwan
- Instability of the Chinese Communist Party
- China's Dong Jingwei defects to the United States
****
**** Japan's relations with Taiwan
****
Japan's Self-Defense Forces (KYODO)
When we discuss China's planned invasion of Taiwan, we generally
(tacitly) assume that the US will be Taiwan's only foreign defender.
While it's not clear how South Korea, Vietnam, Australia or India
might react to China's invasion of Taiwan, Japan has been discussing
how it would react, in increasingly explicit terms.
Taiwan was a colony of Japan, thanks to the Treaty of Shimonoseki,
signed by Japan and China on April 17, 1895, after Japan's victory in
the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95. China ceded Taiwan to Japan as a
result of that treaty, and Japan controlled Taiwan until Japan was
defeated in 1945. Japan's colonization of Taiwan was harsh, but there
were numerous economic benefits to Taiwan, and improvement in living
standards. When Japan declared war on China in 1937, Taiwan was an
ally of Japan against their common enemy, China.
After WW II, Taiwan and Japan had cordial relations, but there was
little talk of joint security and defense planning, since Japan had
adopted its "Pacifist Constitution," which made it illegal for Japan
to deploy armed forces for any reason other than to defend an attack
on Japanese soil.
****
**** Defending Taiwan as 'collective self-defense'
****
Finally in 2015, Japan reinterpreted the constitution to permit
"collective self-defense," which would permit Japanese military forces
to deploy armed forces for an attack on an ally, such as the United
States. (See "5-May-14 World View -- Japan debates 'collective self-defense' to protect America and Japan"
for a detailed explanation of what was adopted in
2015.)
So a commitment to defend Taiwan from an invasion by China is not a
simple thing as it would be in other countries, especially since the
pacifist constitution is very popular among the Japanese people, who
are still trying to figure out why they acted as they did in WW II.
But the increasily belligerent threats from China are forcing
the Japanese to look for a solution.
So with that reinterpretation of the Constitution, Japanese government
officials are considering two possible paths by which they could
militarily support the United States after a Chinese invasion of
Taiwan.
- The US has bases in Japan on Okinawa island, in southern
Japan. A Japanese attack on those bases would be an attack on
Japanese soil, so Japan could fight the Chinese without the
"collective self-defense" reinterpretation. This would be especially
true if the Chinese attack extended to Japan's Senkaku Islands, which
China claims.
- Under the "collective self-defense" reinterpretation, Japan could
fight alongside the US in defending Taiwan from a Chinese invasion if
Japan's government determined that the invasion was a security threat
that threatened Japan's own survival. For example, the Japanese might
view the invasion of Taiwan as a stepping-stone to a planned invasion
of Japan.
****
**** Is Taiwan a 'nation'?
****
In a debate on Covid-19 in parliament earlier this month, Japan's
prime minister Yoshihide Suga referred to Australia, New Zealand and
Taiwan and said, "These three countries have been imposing strong
restrictions on privacy rights" to curb the virus outbreak.
It's not known whether this was a slip or was intentional, but it drew
the usual hysterical complaint from China's Foreign Ministry: "China
expresses strong dissatisfaction with Japan's erroneous remarks and
has lodged a solemn protest against Japan."
China claims Taiwan as a province of China, and has repeatedly said
that they will invade Taiwan at a time of their choosing to force
Taiwan to be part of China. As a result, both the United States and
Japan have adopted a policy of "strategic ambiguity," in order to
encourage both China and Taiwan to continue thinking that the issue
can be resolved in time peacefully (which, of course, it cannot). In
particular, the US has not committed to defending Taiwan, but is
providing weapons to Taiwan for its own self-defense.
For decades, this strategic ambiguity has been debated in Washington
and Tokyo. But now, with the growing military might of China and its
growing belligerence, there is pressure on both the US and Japan to
abandon strategic ambiguity and commit to defending Taiwan in case of
attack.
These discussions are in process, and it's possible that something
will be decided within a few months, or not.
****
**** China's plan for invading Taiwan
****
According to an analysis by Ian Easton, senior director at the Project
2049 Institute, China is preparing for an all-out invasion within five
to ten years.
He says that Beijing’s optimistic version of events goes something
like this:
- Prior to an invasion, cyber and electronic warfare units would
target Taiwan’s financial system and key infrastructure, as well as US
satellites to reduce notice of impending ballistic missiles.
- Airstrikes would quickly aim to kill Taiwan’s top political and
military leaders, while also immobilizing local defenses.
- An invasion would follow, with PLA warships and submarines.
Outlying islands such as Kinmen and Pratas could be quickly subsumed
before a fight for the Penghu archipelago, which sits just 50
kilometers from Taiwan and is home to bases for all three branches of
its military.
- As Chinese ships speed across the strait, thousands of
paratroopers would appear above Taiwan’s coastlines, looking to
penetrate defenses, capture strategic buildings and establish
beachheads through which the PLA could bring in tens of thousands of
soldiers who would secure a decisive victory.
Easton says that Taiwan has been preparing for just such an attack by
fortifying defenses around key landing points and conducting drills to
repel Chinese forces.
****
**** Japan provides vaccines to Taiwan
****
China has blocked Taiwan from getting doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
The Pfizer vaccine was co-developed by the German company BioNTech.
Taiwan was negotiating with Pfizer to get the vaccine, but China was
able to delay the deal indefinitely by pressuring BioNTech and the
German government. The Chinese claim that they had offered to sell
their vaccine to Taiwan, but Taiwanese law bans Chinese-made medical
products, including vaccines.
So earlier this month, Japan delivered 1.24 million doses of
AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to Japan. The Japanese foreign
ministry said that that Japan was responding to a Taiwanese request,
and that the donation reflects “Japan’s important partnership and
friendship with Taiwan.”
On Friday, Japan it would send 2 million additional doses of
AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan and Vietnam, and arrangements
were being made to send 1 million doses each to Thailand, Malaysia,
Indonesia and the Philippines.
In addition, the United States recently shipped 2.5 million vaccine
does to Taiwan. Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu tweeted, “The
Taiwan-U.S. relationship is rock solid, & we’ll keep cooperating
closely in combating COVID19. Forces for good will prevail!”
****
**** Instability of the Chinese Communist Party
****
Analysts who talk about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan usually provide a
time frame of five to ten years. That's pretty much what they have to
say, isn't it.
But any such timeline assumes that the Chinese Communists are pursuing
rational policies. As I've written in the past, crisis wars begin
with a chaotic unexpected event. WW I began because a 12-year-old
decided to shoot an Archduke in 1914. WW II began because a Japanese
soldier had to pee and got lost in the woods in 1937. Those wars were
a complete surprise, even to the belligerents. That's how WW III will
begin. It will be totally irrational and unexpected, and it could
happen any day.
A lot depends on the stability of the CCP government, and I've argued
in the past that any dictatorship is fatally flawed and unstable,
especially as compared to the US Constitutional government, with its
federal system of checks and balances. The problem is that when a
dictator does something really stupid, there's no one there to stop
him, and anyone who tries is executed. This was true, for example, of
Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward (1958-59), which was possibly the
stupidest policy of any country in the history of the world, killing
tens of millions of innocent people for no reason at all, destroying
China's economy for decades.
So now we have Xi Jinping in that same position of dictator. If he
appears weak, he'll be replaced. So he has to be strong, and if he
makes a stupid decision, as Mao did, there will be no one to stop him,
and the result will be disaster.
Xi reached the position of dictator by a brutal anticorruption
campaign, begun in 2012, which targeted some two million officials in
the Chinese Communist Party. This was popular with many Chinese, but
alienated may elites.
****
**** China's Dong Jingwei defects to the United States
****
Xi Jinping is facing many problems. Domestic problems include income
inequality, environmental threats, land grabs, food safety, Air
pollution, water scarcity, and soil contamination. In addition,
China’s aging population means that more retirees are supported by
fewer young people.
Internationally, China is facing criticism about its brutal crackdown
on the free press in Hong Kong, China's arrest and enslavement of
millions of Uighurs, and illegal belligerent actions in the South
China Sea. The Chinese Communists have made it abundantly clear that
they don't care at all what others think of them, and what
international laws they violate. What we're seeing is the
millennia-old Chinese culture saying that the rest of the world are
barbarians, and are to be treated as donkeys, with no purpose except
to serve the Chinese Communists.
On top of all this, there have been reports that Xi Jinping and CCP
officials have been shocked at the defection in February of Dong
Jingwei and his daughter to the United States. Dong is China's Vice
Minister of State Security in the Chinese Ministry of Defense. He is
perhaps the highest-level Chinese defector the U.S. has ever had.
He is reported to be providing informtion about the identity of all
the Chinese spies in the US, and methods used by the Chinese to
infiltrate the US government, businesses and universities.
According to a report from Taiwan, this defection has triggered
factional fights within the CCP leading to a period of unprecedented
instability not seen since the Cultural Revolution.
The point of mentioning all this in an article on Japan's plans to
defend Taiwan from Chinese invasion is that the invasion could occur
at any time -- maybe in the 5-10 years as predicted by the analysts,
but possibly much sooner than that with an overwhelmed dictator Xi
Jinping in charge, and the possibiity that he'll order some military
action in the Taiwan Strait to deflect from his personal or political
problems.
Sources:
- A New High In Japan’s Security Ties With Taiwan – Analysis (Observer Research Foundation, 25-Jun-2021)
- Japan to mention Taiwan stability in defense report for first time (Japan Times, 14-May-2021)
- Japan gov't studies SDF response in event of Taiwan Strait conflict (Kyodo News, 24-Apr-2021)
- Ian Easton / Here’s what could happen if China invaded Taiwan (Japan Times, Bloomberg, 8-Oct-2020)
- Ian Easton On Taiwan: Are war clouds on the horizon? (Taipei Times, 31-May-2021)
- Dong Jingwei - Defector / Jiang Zemin / EDITORIAL: Trouble at the top in China (Taipei Times, 26-Jun-2021)
- Dong Jingwei - Chinese defector / It’s Beginning to Look Like Enemy Action (American Thinker, 23-Jun-2021)
- China spymaster Dong Jingwei makes first public appearance since rumors he 'defected to US with Wuhan lab secrets'.... but social media speculates the image could be photoshopped (Daily Mail, London, 25-Jun-2021)
- Japan Sees China-Taiwan Friction as Threat to Its Security (Bloomberg, 24-Jun-2021)
- Japan to give 6 mln doses of vaccines to Taiwan, 5 SE Asia nations (Reuters, 25-Jun-2021)
- Japan / Time to re-examine Japan’s longstanding ambiguity over Taiwan (Japan Times, 24-Jun-2021)
- Suga refers to Taiwan as country, drawing fire from China (Japan Times, 6-Jun-2021)
- 'Forces for good will prevail': Taiwan welcomes massive U.S. vaccine aid (Japan Times/Reuters, 20-Jun-2021)
- With record warplane incursion near Taiwan, China has a message: We won't be cowed (Japan Times, 16-Jun-2021)
- Taiwan, feuding with China, gets vaccines from Japan (AP, 4-Jun-2021)
- What the United States Wants from Japan in Taiwan (Rand Corp., 10-Apr-2021)
- To prevent war in Taiwan Strait, Japan needs to unite with US (Nikkei, 27-Apr-2021)
- A “Taiwan Relations Act” for Japan? (Asia Dispatch, 25-Feb-2021)
- President Reagan’s Six Assurances to Taiwan (FAS, PDF, 8-Oct-2020)
- The Chinese Communist Party faces a host of domestic and international challenges as it aims to bolster China’s great-power status. (CouncilOnForeignRelations, 23-Jun-2021)
- India Shifts 50,000 Troops to China Border in Historic Move (Bloomberg, 27-Jun-2021)
Related Articles:
- Minister suggests Japan will defend Taiwan against military invasion by China (24-May-2020)
- China crosses and repudiates 'median line' separating China from Taiwan (23-Sep-2020)
- George Soros speech at Davos marks significant global shift against China (27-Jan-2019)
- Xi Jinping invokes the 1840s Opium Wars to justify military action for China's 'rejuvenation' (21-Mar-2018)
- Coronavirus coverup unravels in US as China threatens Australia (01-Jun-2021)
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Japan, Taiwan, China, Xi Jinping, Dong Jingwei,
Treaty of Shimonoseki, collective self-defense, Okinawa island,
Yoshihide Suga, Ian Easton, Pfizer, BioNTech
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
