Can China’s aggression towards Taiwan be stopped? Oriana Skylar Mastro joins the Munk Debate podcast to argue affirmatively that Chinese military capability has advanced too far for the United States to credibly deter the PRC through military means alone. Michael Beckley, an associate professor of political science at Tufts University and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, offers the rebuttal. The full debate is available below.

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Many of China’s military development goals were set with a target date of 2020, which means the PRC is currently in a strong place with its offensive and defensive capabilities. By Mastro’s measure, China now has the most advanced ballistic missile program in the world, including the United States. For Taiwan, this means the reality of an aggressive neighbor who possesses offensive weapons that are very difficult to defend against.

China also has geographic benefits when it comes to offensive maneuvering. If a hot conflict began, neither Taiwan nor the United States has a comparable network of sole-sovereign military bases in the area such as China’s. Not only does this mean China can utilize its air defense capabilities — again, now one of the strongest in the world, by Mastro’s account — but it can also support a robust blockade against Taiwan across the strait and devastate the island both militarily and economically.

As Mastro points out, “Taiwan’s economy completely depends on China, so if China decided to use economic coercion, which is defined as a type of aggression, the United States has absolutely no way of protecting Taiwan from any economic harm coming from the PRC.”

Because of this potential for combined military and economic aggression, Mastro pushed for urgency on deterrence in Taiwan. “The United States and international community do not have forever. The Chinese are not happy with maintaining the status quo, and they will soon believe they have the military capability to [take Taiwan].”

Rather than continuing to act alone, Mastro hopes the United States will lead out in organizing an international coalition that includes other regional partners such as Australia, Japan, and India as actively contributing participants. With the United States no longer seen as a monolith in Beijing, only broad, coordinated cooperation will provide effective deterrence and security for Taiwan.

On another podcast, Conversation Six, Mastro joins Abraham Denmark to discuss China's Taiwan strategy and what the United States can do to deter China from invading Taiwan. The threat of non-military intervention by the United States and its allies is the way forward, she says. "The US needs to do more in non-military realms," she argues.

The China Program at Shorenstein APARC had the privilege of hosting Jude Blanchette, the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies​ (CSIS). The program, entitled "What’s ‘Communist’ about the Communist Party of China?," explored the goals and ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as well as what they might mean for the future of China in the global community. Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the goals of the CCP became less clear. As the country began to adopt market reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, CCP theorists were forced into contortions providing ideological justifications for policies that appeared overtly capitalist. Deng Xiaoping’s concept of “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” came to be seen as a theoretical fig leaf rather than a description of an egalitarian economic system, and by the 2000s, a consensus emerged that the CCP had completely abandoned any pretense of pursuing the Marxist vision it purported to hold. With the rise of Xi Jinping, however, the Party talks with renewed vigor about Marxism-Leninism and the goal of achieving actual, existing socialism. Has the CCP re-discovered communism?  In his talk, Blanchette discussed the abandoned and existing legacies of Mao Zedong, Marxism-Leninism, and the CCP’s vision of socialism. Watch now: 

This article by Oriana Skylar Mastro was originally published in The Interpreter, a publication by the Lowy Institute.

When China began three days of military exercises in the South China Sea’s Gulf of Tonkin back in January, some observers speculated that Beijing was testing the new Biden administration. Harsh words from Beijing accompanied the exercises, with China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin declaring the drills were “necessary measures to resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and security”.

Even against this backdrop, China’s official position is that it remains committed to a peaceful resolution of the South China Sea issue. And the rhetoric China employs at different times does make for a fascinating contrast. For example, China’s Foreign Ministry asserted in July 2020 that “China is not seeking to become a maritime empire” and that it “treats its neighboring nations on an equal basis and exercises the greatest restraint.”

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How then should we make sense of the mixed messages coming from Beijing? Most China experts find discourse to be informative – if not about China’s intentions, then at least about its aspirations. But which statements are indicative of China’s true position?

I argued recently in research for the Wilson Center that scholars need to evaluate the content and specificity of Chinese national discourse in addition to the position of the author or speaker involved. To that end, I analyzed all public speeches made by members of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party from 2013 to 2018. Xi Jinping led both of the Politburos I studied, and each had 25 members. Since some members served in both, this yields speeches by 39 unique individuals.

The speeches related to the South China Sea could be separated into those that mentioned cooperative themes and those with competitive themes. Cooperative themes have two subcategories, cooperation, and political solutions. Competitive themes have five subcategories: sovereignty, military, freedom, tension, and non-regional countries/the United States.

In what might appear good news for regional stability, China’s leaders used more cooperative discourse in public statements about the South China Sea than competitive themes. This might be taken to indicate a willingness to compromise with other claimants – a feature that is especially evident during the first year of each new Party Congress, namely 2013 and 2018.

However, one of the tenets of deriving intentions from discourse is that not all leadership statements are created equal. We need to consider personal power, accountability, and reputation for honesty. This means that statements by Xi, who is described as having “more power and more personal authority than any post-Mao leader”, take precedent.

So here is the bad news. My analysis showed that Xi’s statements accounted for 42.7% of the competitive themes mentioned, even though he is only one of 39 leaders during this period.

There are additional reasons to discount Xi’s cooperative statements: his reputation for dishonesty.

In September 2015, Xi made a public statement at the White House promising not to “militarise” the artificial islands China had been building in the South China Sea. Xi stated that “relevant construction activities that China is undertaking … do not target or impact any country, and China does not intend to pursue militarisation”. While the language at the time was deemed “new”, the pledge remained unclear. Then and subsequently, Xi did not promise to freeze dredging, island-building or activities in the region, nor did he offer any clarity about what “militarisation” meant. In May 2019, then–Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford said that China had “clearly … walked away from that commitment” given the “10,000-foot runways, ammunition storage facilities, routine deployment of missile defence capabilities, aviation capabilities and so forth” on the islands. My analysis in a previous Interpreter article shows that China has indeed militarised these islands to establish control over the islands and the surrounding waters.

Interestingly, China’s foreign ministry also makes more competitive statements than cooperative statements, contrary to what might be the expectation that professional diplomats would lean towards negotiations and reassurance. If soothing language was supposed to mask China’s intentions, ministry statements would be the most likely source. But instead, China seems to prioritise articulating its position on sovereignty and issuing threats to those who violate it over reassurance.

None of this means China will use force in the South China Sea. Xi’s statements calling for a tough stance to protect China’s perceived sovereignty in the South China sea lack specificity – there are no allusions to a timeline or preferred methods. Such ambiguity suggests the leadership wants to have maximum flexibility and avoid being boxed in by its aggressive rhetoric, even if it is popular with the Chinese public. And the Chinese leadership undoubtedly prefers to use diplomatic, legal and economic tools to establish sovereignty over these waters.

But my analysis suggests that China will be unlikely to make the compromises necessary on its expansive territorial claims in these waters to facilitate a viable diplomatic resolution. Instead, China’s leaders hope that political, economic and military power will convince other countries to accommodate China’s position without a fight. And if the other claimants concede to Beijing, it will be harder for the United States or Australia to push back on China’s position.

On February 10, 2021, the China Program at Shorenstein APARC hosted Professor Oriana Skylar Mastro, Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies​ for the virtual program "Military Competition with China: Harder to Win Than During the Cold War?" Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

As US-China competition intensifies, experts debate the degree to which the current strategic environment resembles that of the Cold War. Those that argue against the analogy often highlight how China is deeply integrated into the US-led world order. They also point out that, while tense, US-China relations have not turned overtly adversarial. But there is another, less optimistic reason the comparison is unhelpful: deterring and defeating Chinese aggression is harder now than it was against the Soviet Union. In her talk, Dr. Mastro analyzed how technology, geography, relative resources and the alliance system complicate U.S. efforts to enhance the credibility of its deterrence posture and, in a crisis, form any sort of coalition. Mastro and Oi's thought-provoking discussion ranged from the topic of why even US allies are hesitant to take a strong stance against China to whether or not Taiwan could be a catalyst for military conflict. Watch now: