U.S. think tank warns: China may use a "Trojan horse" approach to deal with the Taiwan issue

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As the Beijing authorities increase diplomatic and military pressure on Taiwan, Taiwan's president-elect Lai Ching-te is about to be sworn in on May 20. The U.S. government will follow precedent and send a delegation composed of former officials, think tank experts and scholars to attend the ceremony. The United States emphasized that this move is in line with the United States' "one-China policy" and the current situation across the Taiwan Strait. 

Although Lai Ching-te recently stated at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit that Taiwan does not rule out dialogue with China on the principle of no preconditions. However, as China modernizes its military and Xi Jinping proposes to achieve the centenary goal of building a military by 2027, the United States is increasingly worried that it will be dragged into a war in which China invades Taiwan. 

The American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War, both Washington think tanks, recently released a latest report predicting that during the four years after Lai Ching-te takes office, China will implement maritime, air, information, network, economic, Various actions such as recognition are like Trojan horses, concealing their true "unification" purpose while delaying the international community's attention to Taiwan, hoping to make Taiwan's situation more and more difficult. Around 2028, Taiwan may be forced to accept Beijing's "peace process" or "unification agreement." 

On May 16, Dan Blumenthal, author of the report and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said at a symposium that the United States and its allies are currently too focused on intimidation or How to defeat the People's Liberation Army, but ignores China's "threat actions other than war."

He believes that Beijing's goal is to "make enough pain to make enough Taiwanese people want peace and cause Taiwan to be isolated from the international community": "It is very important not to let China redefine legitimacy around the Taiwan Strait."

According to the content of the report, Beijing wants to shape the following perceptions and atmosphere, including that if Taiwan strengthens cooperation with the United States, it will lead to an escalation of cross-strait tensions. Beijing’s real purpose in doing this is to weaken U.S.-Taiwan relations and make Taiwan’s international status increasingly isolated. In addition, the Beijing authorities may also use expanded inspections and audits of goods imported into Taiwan, economic and cyber warfare, and even political propaganda to lower the living standards of the Taiwanese people, thus challenging the effectiveness and legitimacy of the Taiwan government's governance. 

Bu Danian said that instead of tracking and monitoring China's every military exercise and the whereabouts of military aircraft, or counterattacking with military operations of the same scale, the international community should instead use political actions to attack the pain points that the Beijing authorities really care about. For example, increasing civil aviation cooperation between Taiwan and other countries around the world, or promoting Taiwan to join the regional air defense architecture in response.

At the symposium, Bonny Lin, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, pointed out that even if China does not use force to invade Taiwan, it can still invade Taiwan. Achieve the goal of defeating the enemy without fighting in the short term. When most people believe that China has too much time to take care of itself due to domestic economic malaise or competition between the United States and China, "Taiwan still faces coercion from China every day, and this situation is getting more and more serious... Even the Kuomintang, depending on the degree of pressure from Beijing, , will also begin to take a different stance and may be more reluctant to contact the Chinese authorities.” 

France Internationale Broadcasting Corp. recently quoted a Booz Allen Hamilton report showing that Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, also said that Xi Jinping does not want to use force to seize Taiwan, but will Try doing it in other ways. The paper titled "How to Succeed at Annexation Without Really Fighting: The PRC's Taiwan Cyber ​​Strategy Explained" points out that China is increasingly Use indirect means to control Taiwan, including using artificial intelligence to subvert the Taiwanese government and public discourse.