For Taiwan, the cutting of an undersea communications cable, and live-fire shooting drills involving dozens of Chinese warplanes off the island’s coast this week were just the latest scary omens from Beijing.
But Taipei’s biggest fear – a full-blown assault by its mighty neighbor – could come faster than they imagined, says a shocking new report on China‘s recent diplomatic gains on the world stage.
Researchers at Australia’s Lowy Institute have shown that the number of governments that support China’s bid to ‘reunify’ with Taiwan, including through military means, has jumped to 89 in recent months.
That amounts to nearly half the membership of the United Nations, a testament to China’s prowess at using its Belt and Road investment scheme to enlist cheerleaders, especially among developing nations in the global south.
The report comes amid deepening divisions between the western countries that have long advocated for Taiwan’s self-rule, as Donald Trump’s America pulls back from its European allies.
Analysts increasingly question whether US President Trump would defend Taiwan from any Chinese assault, or trade away the self-governing island’s autonomy in a grand bargain with Beijing.
They cite Trump’s willingness to reverse decades of US foreign policy, by pulling support for Ukraine and vaunting a peace deal that could cement Russia‘s land grab from its smaller neighbor.
The stakes don’t come higher: many see the South China Sea as the world’s most dangerous flashpoint, where fighting could quickly spiral into a nuclear face-off between Washington and Beijing.
Taiwanese military helicopters fly above Taipei city, as worries over the future of the self-run island deepen
US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping keep their cards close to their chests when it comes to Taiwan
Jack Burnham, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, said China’s success at persuading nations to back its reunification efforts was part of a broader to drive to eclipse the US as the world’s leading power.
‘The growing trend of countries supporting all measures for unification represents Beijing’s efforts to embed its preferences into international law,’ Burnham told DailyMail.com.
It’s also a ‘tactical measure to prepare for a possible crisis or military contingency over Taiwan,’ he added.
Communist-run China sees self-governed Taiwan as a breakaway province that will eventually be part of the country, and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve this goal.
Many Taiwanese see themselves as part of a separate democracy, although most support maintaining the status quo where Taiwan neither declares independence from China nor unites with it.
Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te has vowed to ‘resist annexation or encroachment’.
The Lowy Institute last month released a first-ever data set detailing every UN member’s position on the governments in Taipei and Beijing, showing that China’s claims on the island were quickly gaining traction.
Researchers found that nearly three quarters of the world’s governments now back Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part is China.
Many of them go further, says Benjamin Herscovitch, a former Australian defense official, and others in the study. Fully 89 countries – 46 percent of UN members – give China a free hand when it comes to ‘national reunification’.
Some 53 countries in Africa, where China directs much aid and investment, have greenlighted ‘all efforts by the Chinese government’ toward reunification – a phrase understood to include military force.
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces in Hong Kong as China regained control over another piece of its historic territory
Taiwanese soldiers in live-ammunition artillery training along the island’s China-facing western coast
Fighting over Taiwan could quickly spiral into a nuclear face-off between Washington and Beijing
Herscovitch says China’s diplomatic gains are ‘sobering’ for Taiwan, as they show that ‘nearly half of UN member states have, intentionally or not, formally endorsed a PRC takeover of the island’.
China’s most strident backers are found across Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania and Latin America.
They’re mostly countries of the global south, such as South Africa, Egypt and Pakistan, where China has financed huge mining, port, transport, and other infrastructure projects.
In a recent example, Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake issued a joint statement during a visit to China in January, using the same language in support of ‘all efforts’ toward reunification.
Chinese firms have invested in two key ports in Sri Lanka.
The level of support China has achieved globally would help it dodge UN sanctions in response to any unprompted invasion of Taiwan.
It would also leave Western officials struggling to impose their own network of trade curbs against Beijing than was the case with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Western countries in March 2022 got 141 of 193 UN members to sign on to a UN General Assembly resolution demanding Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine.
Any comparable vote on a China-Taiwan conflict could well get a much lower tally.
China has ramped up its military activities around Taiwan in recent years, and President Xi Jinping has reportedly asked his generals to prepare to retake the island of 24 million people as soon as 2027.
Taiwan on Wednesday condemned China for provocative behavior, after spotting 32 Chinese military aircraft carrying out drills with Chinese warships in the Taiwan Strait area, close to major population centers and key ports.
Taiwan’s coast guard on Tuesday detained a Chinese-crewed cargo ship suspected of severing of an undersea communications cable off the island’s southwest coast – the fifth case of sea cable malfunctions this year for Taiwan.
A joint China-Russia naval joint drill in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, showcased Beijing’s growing might at sea
Taiwan has stepped up its military training drills as fears of a Chinese armed assault intensify
Trump was asked by reporters about Taiwan at the White House this week. He said: ‘I never comment on that.’
Former US president Joe Biden vowed to defend the territory. But the US is not under any treaty obligations to do so, and his successor Trump appears less willing to bankroll a war in Asia in pursuit of his ‘America First’ policy.
When asked by reporters about it this week, Trump replied: ‘I never comment on that. I don’t want to ever put myself in that position.’
Bonnie Glaser, a foreign policy expert at the German Marshall Fund think tank, says Trump’s policy reversal on Russia and Ukraine ‘should not be seen as a precursor for his policy toward Taiwan’.
‘There are important differences. China is not Russia. Taiwan is not Ukraine,’ Glaser told DailyMail.com, adding that only the owner of a ‘crystal ball’ could predict Trump’s coming diplomatic moves.
Polling from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows that US voters would support sending arms to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, but oppose deploying US forces and risking a war with China.
War games exercises run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) showed that the US and its allies could derail an amphibious Chinese assault on Taiwan – but not without taking heavy losses themselves.
Fighting would claim some 10,000 casualties on all sides, CSIS projected. The US would lose 10-20 warships, two aircraft carriers, 200-400 warplanes and some 3,000 troops in just the first three weeks of fighting.
It remains unclear how such a battle would play out, but analysts fear it could lead to implicit or explicit Chinese nuclear threats, bringing the world closer to the terrifying use of doomsday weapons.
Amitav Acharya, an American University professor and author of The Once and Future World Order, says fears of China’s growing diplomatic clout are overblown, as even Beijing’s new backers are taking a wait-and-see approach.
‘If Taiwan declared independence first, it will be subject to Chinese invasion. And many countries may accept it,’ Acharya told DailyMail.com.
‘But if China outright invaded Taiwan before it declared independence, most countries will not support China.’
