A senior US intelligence official is casting doubt on China’s ability to fulfill its plans to forcibly reunify Taiwan by a self-imposed deadline of 2027.
Several U.S. military and intelligence officials have testified publicly in recent years that Beijing’s own plans show that President Xi Jinping has ordered the Chinese military to be ready to take Taiwan by force, should efforts to reunify fail. the island by other means.
They have also said that China’s unprecedented military modernization and expansion efforts have been in line with the order to have an invasion plan ready within three years at the latest.
But Dave Frederick, deputy deputy director for China at the U.S. National Security Agency, isn’t sure they can meet that deadline.
“It’s a pretty ambitious goal, so I’m not going to make any predictions about whether they’ll hit it or not,” Frederick said at a security conference in Nashville, Tennessee. He added that China “remains focused on the 2027 capabilities target,” but that obstacles remain.
One of those challenges, he said, is the Chinese military’s ability to land troops on the island of Taiwan.
An amphibious landing “would be a really challenging military problem for them,” Frederick explained. “A very difficult military challenge for them to solve,” he concluded.
However, he acknowledged that China is building a fourth amphibious landing craft and that “history has many examples of a government deciding to pursue a policy that may not even be in its own best interests, and certainly in cases where military victory is not guaranteed.”
However, Chinese officials dismissed the conversation and told the Voice of America via email that the situation with Taiwan is “a matter that must be resolved by the Chinese people.”
“If the United States truly hopes for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, it must respect the one-China principle and the principles of the three China-U.S. joint communiqués,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington.
Washington should “stop meddling in the Taiwan issue and stop creating new factors that could lead to tensions in the Taiwan Strait,” Liu added.
Frederick is not the first U.S. official to warn that China’s military expansion, fueled by new equipment and weapons systems, may be outpacing its actual capabilities.
The U.S. Department of Defense’s annual China Military Power Report, released late last year, warned that Beijing itself believes it still faces some deficits as it tries to field a force capable of fighting and winning wars against larger adversaries. able.
“They still have a long way to go in terms of having the level of military capability that we think they need to advance their global economic and security interests,” a senior US defense official told reporters at the time.
The official called the lack of combat experience “one of the shortcomings that the PRC highlights in many of its own assessments.” Senior U.S. intelligence officials have said that despite China’s desire to be able to take Taiwan by force, perhaps as early as next year, they believe Xi has not decided whether he will use that option.
“Beijing will continue to apply military and economic pressure, as well as public messaging and influence activities, while promoting long-term economic and social integration across the Strait to induce Taiwan to move towards unification,” according to the annual threat assessment carried out. last month by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
A separate assessment by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), published last week, concluded that “Beijing appears willing to postpone the use of military force as long as it calculates that its unification with Taiwan can ultimately be negotiated.”
“The costs of armed conflict would outweigh the benefits, and Taiwan, the United States, or other countries have not crossed their stated red lines,” the DIA report adds.
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