Taiwan's extended conscription and 'loss of face' for Xi Jinping

Taiwan on Tuesday announced that it will extend mandatory military service from four months to one year, with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen emphatically pointing out in Taipei that 'peace with China will not fall from the sky'. The decision, while under deliberations for nearly two years, is seen to be triggered by the 'strike drills' that Beijing conducted in the sea and airspace around the self-governing island nation on over the weekend.

According to the experts that WION reached out to, China's aggressive military manoeuvres that intensified after the US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi's Taipei visit earlier this year, have pushed the island nation to be better prepared for any contingency.

Suyash Desai, Taiwan-based research scholaron China's military and foreign policy told WION that Beijing'saggression against Taiwan started in 2019 when itcrossed the median line for the first time in 20 years.

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"It was last crossed in 1999. Since September 2020, China started regular incursions in Taiwan's self-claimed Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) on a regular basis," Desai pointed out.

WATCH |China's Xi Jinping's unification plan with Taiwan

"The increase in the duration of conscription is not a surprise," Commodore R.S. Vasan (Retd.), Director General of Chennai Centre of China Studies think-tank told WION.

"The Chinese white paper on Taiwan leaves no doubt about the intentions of Xi Jinping who is determined to achieve something by the use of force that his predecessors could not attempt in the past," Commodore Vasan said.

He was referring to a white paper that China released in August 2022, just days after Pelosi's visit to the island nation. It sought to realise "China's complete reunification" as a "historic mission" of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

To deter China, expanded conscription 'first step'

Experts further add that Taiwan's expanded conscription by itself is insufficient to deal with the threat from China, and that"additional reforms as well as agreater acquisition of modern weaponry" will be required if Taipei is to stand against Beijing.

"The Taiwanese militaryalso has a challenge on its hands to reform current training methods and its treatment of conscripts," Jabin T. Jacob, Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations and Governance Studies at Shiv Nadar University and Adjunct Research Fellow at New Delhi-based National Maritime Foundation, told WION.

"This (conscription) is just the first step if Taiwan wants to maintain the existing cross-strait deterrence," Suyash Desai told WION.

A December of challenges for Beijing

For Beijing, the conclusion of 2022 has been far from smooth.

It began with a collective uproar from people across China against stringent Covid controls that finally forced a remarkable climbdown on ‘zero Covid policy’ from one of the world's most authoritarian governments, and its leader, Xi Jinping.

Beijing’s challenges further expanded with the optics of pushback by Indian troops against Chinese aggression along the Line of Actual Control in northeastern Arunachal Pradesh state’s Yangtse area.

In the final weeks of December 2022, the visuals of burdened hospitals against millions of reported Covid cases forced President Xi to come out and say that he will "never fail"the Chinese people.

On Christmas, the Eastern Theater Command of China's People's Liberation Army said it had carried out "joint combat readiness patrols and joint firepower strike drills" around Taiwan.

Experts have contrasting views if China's handling of its Covid crisis with the failure of 'zero Covid policy' is related to its aggression in the Taiwanese strait and along the Line of Actual Control with India earlier this month.

"The undisputed leader needs an excuse to unify the nation and the failed transgression in Yangtse has not worked out as planned and has resulted in the loss of face for Xi,"Commodore Vasan told WION.

"So the recent increase in (Taiwanese) cross-strait violations and show of force is to divert the people's attention (from the Covid crisis) by displaying an intent to accelerate the process of unification,"he added.

For Jabin T. Jacob,it is quite possible that China's recent aggressions are meant "to distract attention from its shambolic handling of the Covid situation".

"But it should also be understood that Chinese military plans along its borders and especially with respect to Taiwan are long-standing and such transgressions would have occurred sooner or later, with or without the Covid crisis in China right now," Jacob told WION.

Between LAC and South China Sea, a common Chinese tacticalbook in play

Suyash Desai points tothe Science of Military Strategy,the guiding text for the Chinese military that aims tocreate a new normal in its favour by repeatedly indulging in incursion-based armed movements. Desai adds that Beijing has adopted this strategy both with India as well as in the South China Sea."The only difference is that in case of India, they useborder defence units and in case of the South China Sea, they use maritime militia."

"But the People's Republic of Chinauses the People's Liberation Armywith Taiwan, which makes the dispute much more escalatory," Desai adds.

"So, I see the recently increased assertion as a continuation of the policy approach rather than compensation for bad optics from the current Covid crisis," he reasons.

Beijing's preparedness for western support for Taiwan

In one of the rarest public expressions of China's continued alignment with Russia since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi during a phone conversation with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in October 2022, said that Beijing is willing to deepen exchanges with Russia at all levels. Wang Yi said that China will help Russia to "overcome difficulties, eliminate disturbances, realise the strategic goals of development, and further establish Russia on the international stage."

Experts view that the organs of the Chinese Communist Party, with a "threadbare analysis" of the Russia-Ukraine war, would have also "factored the support of the West to Taiwan in the event of hostilities breaking out", according to Commodore Vasan, who also served as Regional Commander in the Indian Coast Guards (East) for about 1100 miles long coastline along the Bay of Bengal.

The sentiment was revelatory during Tuesday's press conference by Taiwan's PresidentTsai Ing-wen.China's "intimidation and threats againstare getting more obvious", she said.

"We can only avoid a war by preparing for a war and we can only stop a war by being capable of fighting a war."

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