Xi Jinping's 48-hour plan to invade Taiwan: 'China's military is expanding' | Defence in Depth

diplomatic sources here in the UK have told me they think Beijing believes it has about 48 hours in which it can act before any International consensus comes together so that's 48 hours to get across the Taiwan Strait get onto the land and to cut off the military and political leadership in Taiwan that's a tall order the ripples from the war in Ukraine have spread far and wide they've even reached the South China Sea so it's time to talk about Taiwan so Taiwan is a vibrant thriving democracy it has very close ties to the US and to The Wider World officially the Republic of China the government fled to the island when the Communists took power in mainland China massive population of about 24 million people some of the islands are less than 10 K's off the coast of China is a major leading world power when it comes to microprocessors that make everything run from our mobile phones to our cars to our fridges to everything basically it has a very big International clout ah so China has said that they want to reunify the whole country states such as 2049 which is 100 years after the split have been pushed around some other dates close to home have been mooted nobody really knows if president XI and if China is prepared to fight for Taiwan or if they want to try and take it back through economic diplomatic means now America has offered protection small P protection it has made no bones about the fact that it does not want to see China try and retake the islands forcefully the senior Pentagon official in charge of the indo-pacific region Eli Ratner has said he doesn't expect anything to happen before the end of the decade there's just too much diplomatic turbulence from the war in Ukraine at the moment so something else on top of that would really be such a shock to the International System and China has yet to see the full results of the war in Ukraine to be confident that they'd be able to do something in the next few years mm-hmm so why is it so important to China well they see it as one of the last little pieces of Unfinished Business from the so-called Century of humiliation that started in the mid 19th century with the Opium Wars with Britain and so on so forth [Music] they want Taiwan to be reunified back with the mainland and it's said that there'd be no Chinese president would be able to stay in position if they renounced their claim to Taiwan and allowed it to go its own way as an independent state so there's no backing down from this China wants it back there's going to be a confrontation at some point in the probably very near future [Music] so when can we expect a confrontation well president XI has made no bones about saying that 2027 is the date that he wants the Chinese Army to be ready to take back Taiwan now that doesn't mean that they're going to do something in 2027 but being ready implies that that is a fairly significant Milestone he's on a one-way Journey there's no status quo here he's not going to allow Taiwan to exist as an independent sovereign state he's made no bones about the fact that Taiwan is going to come home to China it's just a question of when not if taiwan's foreign minister said in the last couple of weeks that he sees 2027 as a significant date because that would be the start of XI jinping's fourth term expected fourth term in power in Beijing so either he'd be looking to secure his legacy if he's feeling hugely confident in his position or if he's feeling a bit of domestic heat and there are some signs of that in China at the moment if he's feeling that kind of heat he might want to do something that is very totemic and a great symbol for the public so retaking Taiwan in their eyes would fit that bill [Music] so the Chinese military it's massive there's about two million men and women underarms it is expanding at a rapid rate the chief of Britain's defense staff says that the Chinese Navy is increasing every four years the size of the entire Royal Navy so that's a big old expansion same thing is happening in space and cyber and air and land but the big thing is the Chinese military is untested it's not fought a war since 1979 when it went to war with Vietnam it doesn't know how it will react on day one of the shooting match we don't know if it's a very top-down organization or if the lower level commanders are able to make decisions for themselves when the shooting match starts so China would have looked at Ukraine and taken two big lessons firstly size is no guarantee of success and secondly that the international support has come together for Ukraine may have taken a little bit of time but it got there eventually and China would be very wary of that in any situation that were to arise over an invasion of Taiwan it'll be very tough military operation in and of itself to retake the islands the main island of Formosa which has the capital Taipei on it is about 70 miles across the South China Sea across the Taiwan Strait China would have seen how Russia a country with a border with Ukraine that has good road and railings has got into all sorts of problems when it launched The Invasion so an amphibious assault is a very tricky operation first of all you've got to get there with U.S supplied cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles coming at them they'd have to sink the Taiwanese Navy and submarines so they can get across that street and then you arrive on land where there's going to be thousands of people waiting for you both in the military and mobilized civilians so how might an invasion look well China is carrying out a number of exercises all the time in the seas and the air around Taiwan just testing the limits so we could see one of these exercises just go on for weeks at a time which will exhaust Taiwan because you can't keep your forces at high redness all the time so you might find that one of these exercises then morphs into an invasion there could be some air and missile attacks against Coastal defenses radar sites airfields we think they would avoid population centers the aim would be to give Taiwan a bloody nose and push for negotiations they wouldn't want to kill huge amounts of civilians but this scenario of a mass air and missile strike has been described as the worst of Both Worlds because it wouldn't do enough to knock Taiwan out of the fight but it would give time for an international consensus to come together to challenge what China would do so it's unlikely the most likely scenario would start with a massive Cyber attack to paralyze taiwan's decision-making bodies both military and political and then a lightning strike to get across the Taiwan Strait and get onto the island diplomatic sources here in the UK have told me that they think China would aim to have that done in about 48 hours so that the world didn't have time to react before there was a de facto new regime in place in Taiwan [Music] another scenario might be a limited Chinese incursion onto one of the other outlying Islands some of them within 10 kilometers of the Mainland of China so if China were to get forces onto the Matsu or kinmen Islands what does that mean now is the West distracted by Ukraine well evidently it's it's focused very much very heavily on Ukraine but is there enough capacity in the system to also handle another crisis who knows but if you were Xi Jinping would you gamble that there is not defense in depth is a weekly video output by the telegraph covering the big defense stories if you would like a daily fix of content about the war in Ukraine I'd suggest Ukraine the latest the telegraphs podcast since the outbreak of the full-blown invasion in February 2022 the telegraph has been tracking donations and deliveries of weapons to Ukraine our experts have analyzed their effectiveness and use on the battlefield and produced an essential Guide to the weapons used in Ukraine for this guide more on these stories we've left links in the description below please do visit our website the latest updates news and 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Channel: The Telegraph

Views: 675,260

Keywords: Telegraph, News, China, Xi, Xi Jinping, Taiwan, Beijing, Taipei, Taiwan Strait, USA, Military aid, Diplomacy, Geopolitics

Id: tb6pykXE_MI

Length: 8min 44sec (524 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 06 2023