Name: China Taiwan Invasion: How Likely Is It Now?
Uploaded: 2021-05-18T13:59:47.000Z
Duration: 19 min 8 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

China has been gearing up to invade Taiwan.

Welcome to China Uncensored. I'm Chris Chappell.

The Chinese Communist Party has become more  and more aggressive with Taiwan. For instance,  

sending warplanes near the island nation.

Especially when high level  US officials are visiting.

And that's because the Chinese Communist Party is  in a bit of a fix. In the past it had said, by the  

year 2020, the Chinese Communist Party should be  prepared to invade Taiwan. It basically made the  

mistake of all those old science fiction movies  that were set in the far, far future of 1999.

But the Chinese regime faces another challenge, in  what it calls “reuniting” Taiwan. That challenge  

is the US. The US is showing  unprecedented levels of support of Taiwan.  

So how has this changed China's invasion  plans? I know the person I need to talk to.  

Joining me once again is Ian Easton, senior  director at the Project 2049 Institute.

Ian, it's always a pleasure to have you on.

Chris, it's a great pleasure to  see you. Thanks for having me.

Definitely. So the Chinese Communist Party said  it would be ready to retake Taiwan by 2020.  

I mean, I guess there's a few months left,  but how likely do you think that is now?

Well, I think happily they're not ready or if they  are, they've decided that they're going to delay a  

potential attack on Taiwan, certainly by this time  of the year, if they have not already mobilized,  

if they're not already prepared to launch  amphibious fleets, and they're not, then their  

window of opportunity has closed. And so Taiwan  is not safe from a potential conflict, of course,  

because there's a lot of other things  that the Chinese Communist Party could do,  

but they are safe from invasion because  from the end of this month forward, the  

sea states that the wind and the wave conditions  and the Taiwan Strait make an invasion virtually  

impossible. And that won't change until  the middle of late March of next year.

So last time you were on the show, we talked  about how Hong Kong in some ways had saved Taiwan  

because the communist party  was so focused on Hong Kong,  

that it wasn't spending as  much effort to threaten Taiwan.  

Now that the CCP has cracked down on Hong  Kong, are things more dangerous for Taiwan?

Yeah, I think it's much more dangerous now. To  your point, the only good thing that has happened  

is that folks in Taiwan, and I think here in  Washington, have started to wake up to the  

threat. They've seen what happened to Hong Kong.  They've seen the backsliding on commitments that  

the Chinese Communist Party made. And they've  seen this really terrible human right atrocity  

with the national security law, which is this  draconian law, which really prevents any real  

freedom of press freedom of assembly. Any of the  freedoms promised to the people of Hong Kong.

I think that served as a wake-up call, and  that's all to the good. The problem is,  

now that the world has been shocked by Hong Kong  and really staggered by what has happened and  

not actually done anything to raise the costs for  some of the Chinese Communist Party's outrageous  

behavior, I'm afraid that it could be the case  that the CCP elite have drawn a conclusion from  

their experience that we really don't want them  to draw. And that conclusion is that they can do  

almost anything. They can have concentration camps  in Xinjiang. They can do this massive crackdown,  

which again, I think really shocked a lot of  people in Hong Kong, and now they can threaten  

Taiwan and no one is going to stand up against  them. And so I'm afraid that for those reasons  

and others, that it's going to be very difficult  to prevent a crisis in the Taiwan Strait.

So even though the window of opportunity  for an invasion this year has passed,  

would you say that we should be more or  less worried about an invasion of Taiwan  

Well, I think with every year that  passes the balance of military power, and  

this is not my own assessment, but this is from  the department of defense. And you can read  

the recently published report to Congress on  Chinese military power. They released it last  

month. According to their assessments, China's  military reform and reorganization program,  

which Xi Jinping started in early 2016,  has really changed the nature of the threat  

that the United States faces and that Taiwan faces  from the PLA, the People's Liberation Army. And  

because China really has engaged in this sweeping  military buildup, I mean, it's really remarkable.  

It's actually stunning what they've been  able to do just in the past five years.  

And if those trend lines continue into the  future, as I think we have to expect them to  

do the balance will continue to tip in the favor  of China and that will encourage them to do what  

they've said very publicly they aim to do, and  that is to attack and eventually conquer Taiwan.  

And that's something that could drag us into  a superpower war. So it's very dangerous.

Well, so let's talk about the Chinese war planes  flying over the median line in the Taiwan Strait.  

Before this year, they had done it very  rarely, and now they send something like  

over 40 war planes across the line in  the last few weeks. Why are they doing  

that? Is it to intimidate Taiwan? Or is  there a tactical reason they're doing it?

Well, there's a lot of benefits from them. And you  could look at it from the tactical perspective.  

Every time they do that, they're able to gain  intelligence that whenever they send fighters  

across the Taiwan Strait media line, which they  no longer recognize that now they've officially  

denied that it ever existed. Even though everybody  respected it for really the past two decades,  

every time they do that, they have intelligence  gathering aircraft airborne, which are collecting  

signals and they have Taiwan on a stopwatch.  And they're seeing how long it takes Taiwan  

to scramble its fighters. They're looking at  their characteristics if the Taiwanese turn on  

their air defense radars, which I think might be  tempting for them to do in certain circumstances,  

the Chinese can collect all of that electronic  data and then they can use it in the future for  

deception purposes. They can use it to jam  those radars if they know what frequencies  

they run on. And they can learn more  about their electronic order of battle.

There's a lot of tactical things they can do.  They can also wear down the pilots in Taiwan.  

They can wear down the airframes in Taiwan because  of the time we use military now is to constantly  

be on strip alert, and they constantly have  to have fighter aircraft actually orbiting  

around Taiwan to respond to these incursions  which are happening constantly now. That means  

that those are pilots and those are aircraft  that are not available for training. They're not  

available for professional military education.  They're not available for their other duties.  

And it really wears them down over time. I think  there's been some mixed numbers that have come  

out. One report said that Taiwan now was doing  3,000 sorties a year. Another said 4,000 sorties  

a year in response to, well, over 2,000 Chinese  military sorties around the Taiwan Strait area.

I'm not sure what the actual numbers are,  but if that's true, that is just staggering,  

because that really is going to overtime.  That is going to wear out the pilots. It's  

going to wear out the airframes and it's going  to reduce readiness in Taiwan. Now, of course,  

that's just the tactical issue. There's also the  strategic issue. And the strategic issue is that  

the Chinese Communist Party has decided to  create a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. And  

they have done everything in their power with  their propaganda services, with their military  

exercises across from Taiwan. I mean, there's  recently amphibious landing exercises, which  

they highlighted. And they said explicitly  that they're preparing to invade Taiwan  

in addition to all that aircraft activity.  And in addition to cyber attacks. Taiwan's  

constantly being hit by cyber attacks. And so  there's a lot of provocations going on right now.  

And one of the questions is why. And  that's a question I think that remains open  