To avoid war across the Taiwan Strait, a central issue of our time is to understand how Chinese President Xi Jinping actually interprets the deterrence strategies of the United States, Taiwan, and U.S. allies and strategic partners.
What strategies is China currently embarking on to achieve its political objectives against Taiwan, without preparing for an actual invasion, and what is the role of deterrence in responding to such a strategy?
The key to understanding Beijing’s red line regarding Taiwan’s political status is China’s fear that Taiwan would become an independent state and be recognised as such by the international community, thus destroying any chance of unification with mainland China.
This is based on Beijing’s insistence that any political dialogue between Taiwan and mainland China must be based on the “1992 Consensus,” a vague agreement broadly based on the “One China” principle, although there are different interpretations of what it means for each side.
Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), in power since 2016, opposes the “One China” element of the 1992 Consensus. As a result, Beijing has refused to engage in any official dialogue with the Taiwanese government since the DPP came to power. The DPP maintains that Taiwan is already independent and does not need to be formally declared. Tsai Ing-wen, who served as Taiwan’s president from 2016 to 2024, has taken this concept further, reforming the DPP while continuing to reject the 1992 Consensus. The Progressive Party has taken a position committed to “maintaining the status quo” on Taiwan’s political status, a position reiterated by the DPP’s new president, William Lai, who took office last month.
But Beijing is making it increasingly clear to its foreign interlocutors that this posture is not enough. Far from feeling relieved that the DPP has backed away from the brink of formally declaring independence, Beijing is making it loud and clear that its political objective remains to drag Taiwan into negotiations over its preferred “one country, two systems” model that it has adopted in Hong Kong.
Beijing may be concluding that Taiwan’s de facto autonomy, which the international community largely agrees with, will become more entrenched and irreversible. As time begins to run out (from China’s perspective), we may begin to see a shift in China’s strategy on the “Taiwan issue.” surelyWe are already seeing this: Over the past 18 months or so, China has increasingly begun to use a multi-pronged “gray zone” strategy, a strategy aimed at exerting new forms of pressure on Taiwan and international opinion to force Taipei to the negotiating table.
Prominent analysts have described the gray zone strategy as one that “seeks economic, military, diplomatic or political benefits without eliciting a costly direct response from an adversary.” Others have described it as a “brink of war” approach that combines political, military, diplomatic, economic and cyber measures aimed at achieving psychological, attitudinal and behavioral change in Taiwan’s public and political opinion.
These measures include Beijing stepping up political attacks to delegitimize Taiwanese political leaders who oppose unification. They also involve military assets such as the navy, air force, and coast guard. They are intended to send naval, air force, coast guard, and other forces into and around Taiwan’s median line, Taiwan’s 24-mile contiguous zone, and islands off the coast of Taiwan, to demonstrate to the Taiwanese people that the Taiwanese regime is unable to defend Taipei’s sovereign claims. They are also accompanied by punitive economic measures (a short of a blockade) aimed at stifling Taiwanese trade, investment, and other forms of national income, demonstrating Taipei’s vulnerability to apolitical Taiwanese voters.
During her term in office, President Tsai Ing-wen has noted increasing cyber intrusions into Taiwan’s economic and communications infrastructure, also intended to signal to the Taiwanese people that Taiwan’s systems are highly vulnerable to integrated cyber attacks.
For China watchers, there are some similarities between Beijing’s “near war” strategy, which has already been attempted in the South and East China Seas, and the one being attempted with Taiwan. Japan has seen this with the flurry of PLA air sorties around the Senkaku and Diaoyu Islands. We have also seen China’s insistence on non-lethal coercive action regarding Second Thomas Shoal and the Philippines.
However, with regard to Taiwan, all sorts of “grey zone” activity seems to be intensifying, and is likely to intensify as the DPP begins its next term and Beijing’s preferred political partner in Taiwan (the Kuomintang, or KMT) looks set for a total of 12 years in opposition.
China’s embrace of gray zone agitation does not mean it has stopped its efforts to build up the military capabilities necessary to seize Taiwan with overwhelming military force. Those efforts continue.
And there is no contradiction in China pursuing these two approaches simultaneously. China’s political strategy toward unification with Taiwan has always had a fundamental military component. In fact, these two approaches are entirely compatible if their cumulative effect is to reduce Taipei’s deterrence and combat capabilities, as well as its political, social, and economic resilience.
Preventing China from initiating military action against Taiwan is a key element of U.S. and allied strategies for maintaining the status quo in the Indo-Pacific region and broader geopolitical stability. But the question for all of us is how to prevent China from taking a new menu of measures that, while “short of war” and “short of aggression,” share the same political objective of forcing Taipei to submit.
Regional and global governments will increasingly be called upon to draw clear connections between identifiable gray-zone actions, on the one hand, and a set of coordinated policy responses, on the other. The alternative is no response at all, and that is perhaps Beijing’s current expectation.
In the future, Taiwan may choose to engage in new negotiations with Beijing on easing cross-strait tensions, new forms of economic cooperation, and new approaches to cross-strait political relations.
Indeed, it would be in all our interest to break the impasse over the 1992 agreement and resume effective dialogue after almost a decade of silence. Silence increases tensions, but talk can reduce them. As Winston Churchill famously reminded us, it is always better to “quarrel, quarrel than war, war.”
But there is a difference between a voluntary, agreed-upon approach to negotiations and a coerced one.
For Beijing, assurances that Taipei and its international partners will maintain the status quo regarding Taiwan’s future political status are essential for strategic stability. But given President Xi Jinping’s apparent unhappiness with Taiwan’s continued autonomy, assurances alone may not be enough.
If we are to successfully maintain peace, this needs to be part of a broader integrated deterrence that will guide all our efforts over the next decade.
