Not Just Boots on the Beach
How China Can Use Deception, Confusion, and Incrementalism to Change the Status Quo on Taiwan
Photo: Alberto Buzzola/LightRocket via Getty Images
Photo: Alberto Buzzola/LightRocket via Getty Images
Brief by Jude Blanchette and Hal Brands
Published July 25, 2024
The Issue
Edited by Jude Blanchette of CSIS and Hal Brands of SAIS, the Marshall Papers is a series of essays that probes and challenges the assessments underpinning the U.S. approach to great power rivalry. The papers will be rigorous yet provocative, continually pushing the boundaries of intellectual and policy debates. In this Marshall Paper, Jude Blanchette and Hal Brands explore four coercive approaches that Beijing could use to change the status quo around Taiwan short of outright invasion or blockade. The paper also highlights the serious challenges Washington and Taipei must address to have a ready response to these scenarios.
Introduction
On September 18, 1931, a Japanese infantry regiment conducted a “false flag” attack on the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railway, detonating an explosive near a stretch of the track and blaming the operation on Chinese troops nearby. The next day, in response to the alleged sabotage, Japanese troops attacked a Chinese military garrison. Within months, the Japanese army had conquered Manchuria and made it a puppet state. Although a commission formed by the League of Nations eventually unraveled the deception and concluded that Japan had illegally invaded China, the international community took no meaningful action, in part because the active period of crisis had settled into a new normal and political will had evaporated.
More than 80 years later, in February 2014, soldiers wearing uniforms without insignias or other identifying information surrounded Ukrainian military bases and seized strategic points in Crimea. Although many observers immediately suspected that these “little green men” were Russian troops, Moscow claimed that they were “local self-defense units” acting on their own initiative. The Ukrainian government quickly lost control of Crimea, which was formally annexed to Russia. Meanwhile, Russian special operations forces began quasi-surreptitiously supporting separatist uprisings in Eastern Ukraine, an operation that eventually led to the full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war that is still underway.
Today, the United States and its allies are focused on the threat of an even bigger war: a possible Chinese assault on Taiwan and the cataclysmic, world-changing conflict it could provoke. But in contemplating Chinese moves against Taiwan, it is worth keeping these earlier incidents in mind because they highlight an important if underappreciated fact: great powers pursuing revisionist aims often seek to disguise their actions, create a cloud of uncertainty around them, or achieve gains through a sequence of “salami slices” in order to increase the odds of a successful fait accompli that will decrease the costs they must pay for their aggression. As Washington ponders China’s next steps vis-à-vis Taiwan, it is vital to understand how Beijing might utilize subterfuge, “salami slicing” tactics, and wedge-driving strategies to isolate Taiwan and ultimately compel “reunification.”
This paper does not take the position that China has abandoned or will abandon the possibility of a more dramatic, full-on invasion of Taiwan, should Chinese leader Xi Jinping conclude that the road to “peaceful” annexation is closed (although the two authors of this report do differ in their views on how likely this scenario is).[1] The potential for an outright invasion is real, and the consequences of such a gambit would be dire. A Sino-American war over Taiwan would be a global catastrophe, and it is imperative for Washington and its allies to do all they can to deter such an attack.
Yet China has more than one way of coercing Taiwan into political capitulation.[2] Indeed, the more successful Washington and its friends are in deterring the “D-Day” scenario, the more Beijing may be incentivized to focus on lower-intensity, or less obvious, forms of aggression instead.
This paper puts aside the prospect of an invasion or direct blockade and instead discusses four coercive approaches that Beijing could use to change the status quo: (1) a decapitation strike meant to exploit uncertainty in Taipei’s continuity of government arrangements; (2) a quasi-disguised maritime quarantine; (3) the taking, perhaps through ambiguous means, of one of Taiwan’s outlying islands; and (4) the staging of a catalytic incident in the Taiwan Strait. Each of these approaches would feature some degree of ambiguity and deception. Each would also target key vulnerabilities in Taiwan and in the U.S.-Taiwan relationship, not the least of which include Taiwanese political will and Taiwanese confidence in the availability of U.S. support.
This is not to say that China will conduct any of these operations—each of which could fail and each of which would entail significant risks for Beijing. Nor is the argument here that a conflict with China over Taiwan is preordained. In the authors’ judgment, China would only dramatically increase its coercion of Taiwan—whether disguised or overt—if it believed it had a decent chance of success and it had run out of other, less violent options for shifting the status quo. Yet it is entirely possible that Beijing could arrive at this juncture sometime in the coming years. As is on display in Ukraine, dictators make decisions that often conflict with rationality. Thus, it is crucial to understand that the parameters of possible Chinese action vis-à-vis Taiwan are more expansive than is commonly understood, if only so that the United States and its allies can forge a comprehensive response. A complete deterrence strategy must keep Beijing from salami-slicing its way to victory in the Taiwan Strait, even as the United States also races to deter a deadly high-end fight.
A complete deterrence strategy must keep Beijing from salami-slicing its way to victory in the Taiwan Strait, even as the United States also races to deter a deadly high-end fight.
Assumptions
This analysis rests on several assumptions about Chinese preferences and behavior:
First, China wants to annex Taiwan or otherwise bring about its political capitulation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This has been a consistent desire of Beijing’s since 1949. Although there is a lively debate about Xi’s sense of urgency in achieving this goal, there is no doubt that he—like generations of Chinese leaders before him—seeks to bring Taiwan to heel, or that China is developing the tools, from hard military power to disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks, to do so. The fact that China is actively seeking multiple ways of achieving its long-held goal of annexation or forced capitulation means that the United States, its allies, and most importantly Taiwan itself should be contemplating all potential angles of attack.
Second, Xi or any future Chinese leader would prefer to take Taiwan with minimal international blowback. That blowback could include immediate repercussions such as economic sanctions or war with the United States; it could also include longer-term costs, such as a region that rallies against Beijing after Taiwan falls. The more dramatic the action China takes against Taiwan, the stronger the regional and global reaction might be. Beijing’s grand strategy encompasses goals beyond taking Taiwan, and so it will seek to balance its global aspirations with the important objective of achieving “reunification.”
Third, and related, Beijing would prefer to take Taiwan in ways that make it harder for the United States to intervene effectively and rally regional and global support if it does get involved. This puts a premium on pursuing annexation in ways that mask Beijing’s intentions, or at the very least sow doubt about what is happening and who is at fault. Over the past 15 years, for instance, China has often blamed the Philippines or Japan for escalating tensions in the South and East China Seas—and then used the resulting crises to strengthen its presence around key hot spots. More recently, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) launched joint military exercises in the waters and airspace around Taiwan in response to a “provocative” inauguration speech by Taiwanese president William Lai.[3] Decisions to use military force are ultimately political choices, and the more China can move in ways that complicate the politics and geopolitics of a U.S. response, the bigger the head start it will have toward achieving a fait accompli.
Fourth, Beijing would ideally like to avoid the most vexing governance and security challenges that could occur after a direct, full-bore assault.[4] Put differently, Beijing would prefer to rule a Taiwan that is not ruined, physically and economically, by conflict or roiled by a raging insurgency. Coercing Taipei to accept a political settlement, even an unpopular one, minimizes the governance and security challenges in comparison to a post-invasion scenario. Assuming that Beijing cannot find a (coerced) political path forward, it may still prefer to use tools other than the PLA—such as the People’s Armed Police, the Chinese Coast Guard, or the intelligence services—to precipitate a change in the status quo. Of course, the realities of pursuing an annexation strategy may complicate Beijing’s desires; nonetheless, from a planning perspective, the cleaner and less violent the path to “reunification,” the easier the security and governance challenges that follow annexation will become.
Fifth, China does not necessarily have to pursue annexation in a single bite. It could try, instead, to coerce Taipei into formal political negotiations that would have unification as the eventual endpoint, on the assumption that those negotiations would be consummated after Taiwanese resolve and U.S. credibility are shattered. Again, recent experience is instructive: Beijing’s periodic assertiveness around Scarborough Reef and Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea is driven, in part, by the desire to put pressure on the U.S.-Philippines alliance by demonstrating that Washington can do little to help Manila uphold its economic rights and territorial claims in scenarios short of all-out war.
With these assumptions in mind, some might look to Hong Kong’s recent experience as the model for Beijing’s preferred Taiwan strategy. Yet this analogy is both instructive and misleading. It is instructive in the sense that Beijing eventually achieved a decisive outcome—a significant blow to Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” arrangement—but it did so through measures meant to minimize collateral damage to the city’s position as a global financial hub. China did not, for instance, send the PLA into the city’s streets—a step that likely would have provoked greater global blowback. Instead, it used local police forces to quell the demonstrations and then—utilizing bureaucratic and legal channels—pushed through a draconian national security law that dealt the critical strike to Hong Kong’s autonomy. Because Beijing used lawfare to achieve its aims, it was politically and diplomatically challenging for the United States, the United Kingdom, and other stakeholders to do much beyond symbolic sanctions. The Chinese leadership calculated that this combination of measures would achieve their desired result—breaking the back of independent politics—with minimal geopolitical cost. Rather than demonstrating Xi’s unbridled appetite for risk, the Hong Kong example demonstrates his preference for lawfare and salami-slicing as a means to fundamentally alter the strategic landscape.
But the Hong Kong analogy also has limitations, the most important of which is that the city had been Chinese de jure territory for more than 20 years by the time the culminating actions came. This gave Beijing legal channels through which to constrict Hong Kong’s political liberties. It also meant that China could use non-military forces, such as the police, to suppress the popular response. Such options would not be available to China in a Taiwan scenario, so Beijing would need alternative ways of generating the leverage necessary to achieve a decisive outcome.
Of course, just because Beijing might want to take Taiwan through actions short of invasion does not mean it can do so. It is possible that increased, but not immediately decisive, coercion of Taiwan could actually encourage a stronger U.S. commitment to the island or incentivize Taiwan to take stronger measures to defend itself. It should be remembered that Mao Zedong’s shelling of Taiwan’s offshore islands in 1954 encouraged President Dwight D. Eisenhower to push through a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. Something similar has happened in recent years, as the PLA’s provocative military exercises have led to increased U.S. arms sales and more explicit promises of U.S. support by President Biden. Indeed, options beneath the threshold of outright war all suffer from this potential liability, which is why the notion that Chinese leaders might opt for dramatic, decisive military action meant to solve the Taiwan problem once and for all cannot be dismissed.[5]
But the extreme risks and potentially disastrous costs of invasion also must weigh heavily on Beijing’s calculus, which is why options short of invasion must be considered, too.[6]
Scenario 1: Decapitation Strike
On March 19, 2004, President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu were traveling in an open-top Jeep in the southwest city of Tainan for a campaign stop when two bullets tore through their vehicle, injuring both Chen and Lu. The pair won reelection the following day, but before the authorities could complete their investigation into the assassination attempt, two of the suspected gunmen died under mysterious circumstances. Although some, including Vice President Lu, blamed the PRC for the attack, no conclusive evidence was found to support this assertion.
In 2017, an assailant carrying a stolen Japanese sword attacked a military police officer outside of the Presidential Office Building. According to police reports, the man, surnamed Lu, had a PRC flag in his possession at the time of the attack. More recently, a member of the Presidential Office’s Department of Security Affairs and an officer from the National Security Bureau’s Special Service Center were convicted of leaking information to Chinese intelligence about then-president Tsai Ing-wen’s itinerary. According to media reporting, the intelligence included a “hand-drawn organizational chart of the Special Service Center,” as well as “the names, titles and work phone numbers of senior security officers guarding the Presidential Office and Tsai’s residence in the heart of Taipei.”[7]
These incidents highlight two underappreciated risks to Taiwan’s political resiliency: there is insufficient security around Taiwan’s elected leadership, and perhaps more worryingly, there is insufficient legal clarity on the line of succession.
Although Taiwan reportedly has an internal plan for leadership transition, Article 49 of its constitution merely stipulates
"In case the office of the President should become vacant, the Vice President shall succeed until the expiration of the original presidential term. In case the office of both the President and the Vice President should become vacant, the President of the Executive Yuan shall act for the President; and, in accordance with the provisions of Article 30 of this Constitution, an extraordinary session of the National Assembly shall be convoked for the election of a new President and a new Vice President, who shall hold office until the completion of the term left unfinished by the preceding President."
This language raises several worrying questions: What is the timeline for the convocation of the National Assembly? Hours? Days? Months? Article 30 stipulates that the president of the Legislative Yuan (LY) “shall issue the notice of convocation,” but it does not clarify under what timeline and what occurs should the president of the LY fail to issue the notice in a timely manner.[8] Furthermore, what happens if all three individuals listed are incapacitated or killed? How can the National Assembly be convoked?
Beijing may consider exploiting these vulnerabilities to create a sharp constitutional crisis, and it could use the resulting chaos to alter Taiwan’s political orientation. It might do so if years of accumulating political trends in Taiwan—such as continued Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) dominance of the presidency—convince Chinese officials that inaction would be the greater risk. Alternatively, Beijing might act if it believes that a dramatic change in cross-Strait dynamics—such as a formal declaration of de jure independence or the reestablishment of the U.S.-Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty—was highly likely to occur. In other words, an assassination attempt on Taiwan’s political leadership would be intended to serve as a substitute for a full-on invasion, carried out in a way that is designed to create confusion for the Taiwanese people and the United States. And it would not come out of the blue; it would instead follow a progression of political and diplomatic developments that Beijing considered to pose a near-existential risk to its cross-Strait strategy.
As in 2004, Beijing would be the early and obvious target of recrimination, but the key question is how or if Taiwan and the United States would be able to formulate an effective response. In the absence of clear proof, accusations would remain just that. And as was the case in Crimea in 2014, or Manchuria in 1931, even after the truth becomes apparent, the window of opportunity to take effective action might well have closed.
How might this scenario play out? A successful attack on Taiwan’s president and vice president, perhaps during a presidential inauguration or during the president’s annual National Day address on October 10, would immediately throw the island into turmoil. If the president of the LY were unharmed, this individual would bear enormous responsibility for bringing political order to a badly shaken nation. Such an effort would be difficult even in the most mature of democracies.[9] In this early chaos, Beijing would have ample opportunities to stoke fear and uncertainty through disinformation and covert political meddling. If the LY president were killed, Taiwan would face an even graver crisis due to the acute leadership vacuum. Even if Taiwan had an internal line of succession, the absence of a publicly and constitutionally recognized process for transferring political power would call into question how legitimate that transfer is in the eyes of a shell-shocked public. Turning again to current events, the current fractious nature of Taiwan’s legislative politics, owing to an extraordinarily divisive partisan political environment, should put a damper on how likely the prospect of the three main political parties “coming together” is.
How might Beijing take advantage of the ensuing chaos? There is the prospect of Beijing unilaterally sending “security assistance” to help stabilize the situation, but even as Taiwan’s people reel, this might be seen as too direct an effort. A more realistic path is for pro-Beijing voices in Taiwan’s political system to seek to utilize the confusion and constitutional crisis to seize political power or otherwise open up space for a dramatically transformed political leadership on Taiwan. Success would not be guaranteed, of course, and Beijing would only consider such a move if it saw the cross-Strait situation as dire and felt the need to take drastic steps to reorient the status quo.
As such, this type of brazen attack would be a huge gamble. Any assassination attempt may fail, exposing Beijing’s complicity in the process. Even if the attack were successful, there is no guarantee that a post-decapitation strike plan would be carried out with any precision. Moreover, if Beijing intended to send “security assistance” to Taiwan following an assassination, it would presumably have to build up its forces opposite the island beforehand, which might give the game away. And any attack on Taiwan’s leadership would likely be seen by many in Taiwan and the international community as obvious Chinese aggression, calling forth a punitive response.
Beijing’s bet, in other words, would have to be that this option nonetheless carries less risk than either allowing Taiwan to drift further away from the mainland or taking more overt military action to change its trajectory.
Scenario 2: Quarantine
In August 2022, Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, making her the first speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives to do so in a quarter-century. Beijing responded with military exercises meant to show off the PLA’s improving capabilities to conduct a blockade, bombardment, or invasion of Taiwan. Chinese missiles overflew Taiwan (albeit through outer space) and splashed down in its surrounding waters—a clear demonstration of Beijing’s ability to choke off vital sea lanes.[10] In May, just after the inauguration speech of President William Lai, Beijing again launched massive military exercises encircling Taiwan, including “comprehensive law enforcement operations” by the Chinese Coast Guard.
The most recent exercises highlight an option available to Beijing short of invasion and formal blockade: a quarantine meant to probe Washington’s risk tolerance and potentially strain its relationship with Taipei while sending a clear signal to the people on Taiwan that they are isolated.[11] As a recent CSIS report on the prospect of a PRC quarantine of Taiwan concluded, “The purpose of a quarantine is not to completely seal Taiwan off from the world but to assert China’s control over Taiwan by setting the terms for traffic in and out of the island.”[12]
Beijing might seize on any variety of potential pretexts: a “provocative” statement or policy departure from Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te; a trip to the island by another high-ranking U.S. official; or a U.S. arms sale that, from Beijing’s perspective, threatens the status quo in the strait. A quarantine would be meant to mimic the effects of a more traditional naval blockade, without necessarily emulating its forms.[13]
For example, Beijing could announce that the Chinese Coast Guard, rather than the PLA Navy, would conduct customs inspections of shipping headed to and from Taiwan. It could further disrupt maritime traffic into Taiwan by conducting missile tests that terminate in frequently used shipping lanes in the international waters off the island’s major ports. Related, the PLA could announce a series of air and sea exercises in international waters off of Taiwan’s major western ports with no indication of duration, disrupting maritime trade under the pretext of “normal” military training. China could also ratchet up the pressure by having the PLA Air Force “escort” traffic into Taiwan’s air space, as some observers feared it might do at the time of Speaker Pelosi’s visit.
China certainly has the capabilities for any of these scenarios. Its coast guard is the world’s largest; it features significant surface combatants and is, in essence, a second Chinese navy. Beijing also boasts the world’s largest conventional missile force, with a deep magazine of short-range missiles that can target the waters around Taiwan. Its inventory of fighter aircraft dwarfs Taiwan’s and whatever contingent the United States has available in the Western Pacific.
What might make this option even more attractive is the dilemmas it would create for the United States, its regional allies, and Taiwan. Of the 193 UN member states, only 11 (plus the Holy See) diplomatically recognize Taiwan. So even though Washington and its allies would strenuously object to Chinese actions, a customs quarantine would be a less clear-cut act of international aggression than an invasion or even a conventional naval blockade of a fully sovereign state. By relying primarily on the Chinese Coast Guard and shore-based assets, this option would also reduce the danger of high-seas encounters between war-fighting navies (at the outset, at least). Similarly, this approach offers China the ability to achieve some effects of a blockade without crossing into what Taiwan deems as its territorial waters; missiles splashing down just outside of that limit could scare off shipping or at least drive insurance rates skyward.
The soft quarantine would thus highlight, in a very public way, Taiwan’s inherent vulnerability as an island nation dependent on imports of food, energy, and other vital resources.
The soft quarantine would thus highlight, in a very public way, Taiwan’s inherent vulnerability as an island nation dependent on imports of food, energy, and other vital resources. Even if a quarantine were only enforced selectively or intermittently, it would remind Taiwan of the economic noose Beijing can cinch tight around its neck. The United States and other friendly countries might try to defeat the quarantine by organizing a relief expedition and escorting planes and ships into Taiwan. But Washington might struggle to do so indefinitely, especially if this crisis happened when U.S. naval assets were already stretched thin by other commitments—for example, threats to freedom of navigation in the narrow waterways around the Arabian Peninsula. Indeed, the true goal of this strategy might be to expose the limits of U.S. support of Taiwan—and thereby soften the island up for further pressures meant, eventually, to cause its capitulation. There is also the possibility that the voices calling for “restraint” in the United States and other Western capitals would win out, after debate on whether Washington really wants to risk a conflict with China over some ships being boarded in waters thousands of miles away.
That is not to say this approach is risk-free for Beijing. A limited quarantine would still be seen as aggression by Washington, Tokyo, Canberra, Manilla, and Seoul, to say nothing of Taipei, and so while it may “succeed” in the short term, it might also strengthen international support for Taipei, just as Beijing’s firing of rockets into Japan’s exclusive economic zone in August 2022 helped galvanize a more assertive Japanese approach vis-à-vis China. This approach could still turn into a high-stakes game of chicken, if U.S. warships and aircraft escort relief shipments into Taiwan and dare Beijing to get in the way. If China does not blink, in that scenario, it could have a war on its hands; if it falters, that could undermine the credibility of its coercive threats. Moreover, blockades and quarantines have a poor record of convincing countries to give up their independence; just as often, the suffering they cause strengthens, at least for a time, the will to resist. But a quarantine might still appeal to Xi, not least because it would also force the United States to decide if it wants to escalate to a full-blown crisis—and to sustain Taiwan indefinitely—in a situation where the PLA has not yet fired a shot.
Scenario 3: Offshore Island Seizure
Several of Taiwan’s outer islands already live in the shadow of U.S. ambiguity, as the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act—which directs the president and congress to consider “appropriate action” in response to “threats to the security or the social or economic system of the people of Taiwan”—covers only “the islands of Taiwan and the Pescadores [‘Penghu’].”[14] This means that one of the only legally binding commitments the United States has to Taiwan does not extend to its outlying islands—Pratas, Kinmen, Itu Aba, the Wuchiu Islands, and Matsu. As a result, these islands are potential targets for a Chinese takeover, not necessarily as a stepping stone for a full invasion of Taiwan, but as a way of probing U.S. and Taiwanese risk appetite and exposing the limits of American commitment and credibility.[15]
This calculus has been demonstrated to exist in modern U.S.-China relations. During the two Taiwan Strait crises of the 1950s (1954 and 1958), Mao Zedong repeatedly used the shelling of Taiwan’s offshore islands as a way to probe the United States and test its relationship with Taipei. As Mao stated in August 1958 meeting of the Politburo, “although we have fired dozens of thousands or rounds on Jinmen [Kinmen], we only mean to probe [America’s intention].” He added, “we need to see if the Americans want to carry these islands on their back.”[16]
An appealing target might be Pratas Island, which is sparsely populated with only a small contingent of Taiwanese coast guard and military personnel. The island is of little inherent strategic value to Taiwan, and its seizure might not provoke any substantial military response from either Taiwan or the United States, assuming casualties are low to zero. At a minimum, the takeover of the island would force the United States to confront the dilemma of whether it wants to risk major war with China over a small island of just 430 total acres that sits in the middle of the South China Sea.
Indeed, Beijing has multiple options for taking Pratas Island. It could announce military exercises in the waters and airspace surrounding the island that would have the functional effect of cutting Pratas off from its regular shipments of water, food, and other supplies from Taiwan’s main island. Beijing might then signal through lower-tier diplomatic channels that Taiwan can rotate existing military and coast guard off the island, but it cannot bring new troops and coast guard on.
Alternatively, a more confrontational—and riskier—approach would be simply to directly overpower the tiny contingent of coast guard and marines stationed on the island. This would, of course, invite condemnation from Taipei, Washington, Tokyo, Manila, and other capitals that would see such a move as naked aggression. But it is not at all clear that any of these countries, including the United States, would be able and willing to muster a proportionate punitive response. For the United States, the challenge would be explaining to the American people why a tiny island nearly 300 miles from Taiwan, and which is not covered by the Taiwan Relations Act, is worth a possible conflict with China, the world’s second-largest economy.
In any of these scenarios, geography would severely constrain the response from Taipei and Washington, who would have to decide whether to tolerate the loss of a small, geopolitically insignificant chunk of Taiwan’s territory or risk a much bigger fight just a few miles from China’s shores. As Lancaster University’s Andrew Chubb has written, an outer island seizure “would offer Beijing greater flexibility and escalation control, lower risk of civilian casualties, and less likelihood of sparking a strong Taiwanese response or U.S. intervention.”[17]
A common objection to such scenarios holds that the capture of an outer island yields China little to no strategic benefit if the goal is the full annexation of Taiwan, as it would still need to attempt a direct attack on the main island of Taiwan, which would presumably be on high alert. Further, even if the PLA were to cleanly seize Pratas, it would simply confirm the fears of many countries in the region—its initial gain of Taiwan territory would have come at the expense of “tripping the alarm” and therefore galvanizing action in Tokyo, Manilla, and Canberra.
But such objections are premised on the idea that Beijing’s immediate goal in undertaking such actions would be “reunification.” A more plausible objective for Beijing would be to cut a slice of salami that the United States and Taiwan will not be willing or able to defend. Here, the main goal would be a clear provocation that is met with an underwhelming response, for it would publicly demonstrate that Washington’s bark is worse than its bite when it comes to defending Taiwan. This strategy could thereby erode Taiwan’s confidence in U.S. support—to say nothing of its confidence in its ability to protect itself—while also provoking anxiety in U.S. allies and partners over Washington’s inability to credibly defend against incremental Chinese aggression. And at the point that Beijing is willing to undertake such a gambit, it may already be pricing in the erosion of its remaining goodwill in the region.
Scenario 4: False Flag
A final scenario involves a false flag operation—akin to what Japan perpetrated in Manchuria in 1931—meant to justify subsequent military action against Taiwan. The current situation offers plenty of possibilities. Chinese aircraft regularly fly across the center line of the strait or into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, where they are tracked by Taiwanese air defenses or intercepted by Taiwanese fighters. Run-ins between Taiwan’s coast guard and Chinese civilian vessels have occasionally turned deadly. Chinese drones overfly Taiwanese territory; Chinese forces intercept—and dangerously crowd—planes and ships belonging to Taiwan’s friends. The air and waters of the Western Pacific are becoming crowded, dangerous, and primed for some catalytic incident.
China could concoct a Taiwanese “provocation”—a collision between Taiwanese and Chinese ships or aircraft, or perhaps even an alleged Taiwanese attack on Chinese forces operating in or around the strait. It could then use full-throated propaganda and disinformation to pin the blame on Taipei and exploit the incident to obliterate the status quo.
One option would be to use the incident as justification for a large-scale, potentially decisive attack on Taiwan, in which case the point of the subterfuge would be simply to complicate the domestic and coalition politics of the U.S. response. Or Beijing could use the incident as pretext for something more limited, such as “retaliatory” strikes on Taiwanese bases and military assets. Likewise, the PLA Air Force could simply conduct large-scale, persistent intrusions into Taiwan’s airspace, meant to assert its ability to overfly the island at will—forcing Taipei to choose between submitting to this confidence-crushing humiliation or contesting these intrusions at the risk of war.
This approach offers many benefits for Beijing. It would showcase China’s overwhelming escalation dominance in the area around Taiwan, which leaves Taipei with few good options for responding to limited strikes or stepped-up military pressure. It would exploit the ability of China’s state-directed propaganda apparatus to rapidly disseminate a false or misleading narrative, as officials and media outlets in the United States, Taiwan, and other nations would struggle to respond.[18] It could also strain the U.S.-Taiwan relationship by forcing Washington to decide how much risk to run in pushing back against limited Chinese aggression—a real dilemma, given that U.S. officials would presumably not wish to see matters escalate further.
Even if a false flag incident led to more dramatic forms of aggression, this approach could—by sowing ambiguity and confusion—slow U.S. decisionmaking and exacerbate the severe time pressures a distant United States faces, even in the most favorable circumstances, in rushing to Taiwan’s aid. A false flag operation does not have to fool everyone forever. It just has to foul up the international response long enough for Beijing to create new facts on the ground.
The downsides are also considerable. The United States has shown, during the war in Ukraine, that it can sometimes detect and reveal false flag operations before they occur (although this may hinge on remarkable intelligence penetration of the sort Washington seems to have achieved in the Kremlin). Even if a false flag operation created momentary confusion, any further use of force against Taiwan could quickly bring clarity to the debate in Washington and other capitals. And if the false flag were merely a prelude to more limited military actions, the United States could still respond in ways that would make Taiwan a tougher nut to crack—by deploying larger numbers of troops on Taiwanese territory, for example. If this was the case, the outcome might actually be to increase Taiwan’s resilience by strengthening its faith in U.S. support.
Conclusion
None of these options is a silver bullet for Beijing. Deceptions can be unraveled. Coercion, even when clouded by confusion, can invite strategic blowback. To return to an earlier example, Russia’s ambiguous aggression in Crimea gave it control of that peninsula, but at the same time, Kyiv responded to the loss of Crimea by accelerating its alignment with the transatlantic community—and thereby confronted Putin with the dilemma he tried to solve, disastrously, with a full-on invasion in 2022. Yet China might still consider limited options—both because the near-term risks associated with them remain lower than the risks associated with a large-scale, overt aggression such as a direct invasion, and because these options could create significant political dilemmas for Taiwan and the United States.
Each of the scenarios reveals a weakness China could try to exploit: from Taiwan’s deficient continuity-of-government procedures, to its inherent economic vulnerabilities, to uncertainties around how the United States would respond in crises short of all-out conflict. Most fundamentally, these approaches would target Taiwan’s political will to resist and its confidence in U.S. support—the two vital, interrelated intangibles that Beijing must weaken to achieve unification without a brutal fight.
If these scenarios illustrate how Beijing might try to thread that needle, they also highlight some of the challenges Washington and Taipei must address. Taiwan’s survival may hinge as much on its internal security and continuity-of-government procedures as on its stockpile of anti-ship missiles and sea mines. The United States, for its part, needs to be developing contingency plans for cases of limited aggression. The specifics of those plans will vary according to the contingency. But the crucial point is that they must include sharp, non-kinetic punishments that allow the United States to inflict damage on China without sparking a larger military confrontation in places where the escalation dynamics are unfavorable—as well as measures that defeat the intended Chinese political effect of ambiguous aggression by significantly deepening U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic support for Taiwan.
The United States might communicate to Beijing that any significant coercive change in the status quo would render the norms and agreements governing U.S.-Taiwan-China relations a dead letter—thereby clearing the way for, among other things, a thicker, more robust military-to-military relationship between Washington and Taipei, and perhaps even a larger, more capable, and more visible U.S. troop presence in Taiwan. Or it could indicate that aggression against outlying islands is likely to lead to more explicit U.S. security guarantees for the Taiwanese territory that remains. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act already sets the groundwork for such messages.[19]
Similarly, the United States might—in coordination with allies and partners—preload packages of economic sanctions that could be applied in cases of ambiguous aggression. The challenge here is that the magnitude of sanctions needed, and the importance of signaling them credibly and early, are all difficult to pull together, especially under scenarios where Beijing’s actions are in the gray zone, and therefore not always seen as sufficiently provocative to risk a possible global recession.[20] It would also be useful to wargame scenarios short of outright conflict with Taiwan and other friendly countries, if only to form a stronger shared understanding of the difficulties those scenarios might create in the capitals whose combined effort would be needed to forge an effective response.
In a contest short of war, the center of gravity is Taiwan’s confidence in its relationship with Washington and in its own ability to resist.
In a contest short of war, the center of gravity is Taiwan’s confidence in its relationship with Washington and in its own ability to resist. The goal should thus be to convince Beijing that violent half-measures will backfire strategically even if they succeed tactically, as they would strengthen U.S. and international support for Taiwan and thereby harden Taipei’s hostility to unification at the point of a gun.
Most broadly, the upshot of this analysis is that Washington needs to expand its conception of deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. If the United States prepares only for incremental or ambiguous aggression, it risks making a full-scale invasion more attractive for Beijing. But if it focuses only on high-end deterrence, it could lose on the installment plan as China uses creative tactics that erode Taiwan’s sovereignty and its confidence in the United States. Beijing has many ways to change the status quo in a sensitive area. The United States will need a holistic deterrence strategy to match.
Jude Blanchette holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Hal Brands is Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
This brief is made possible by general support to CSIS and the support of the America in the World Consortium.
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