Tensions in the Taiwan Strait Are of Xi’s Own Making

D espots have a way of concocting pretexts to justify their aggression, and they can almost always rely on foreign collaborators to amplify their propaganda. The notion that Vladimir Putin’s brutal war against Ukraine owed in part to NATO expansion has found many receptive ears, even those of respected foreign-policy savants.

Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser and later secretary of state under President George W. Bush, chafed at this specious claim. “In the eight years that I worked with Vladimir Putin he did not mention NATO expansion to me or to President Bush,” Rice said in a lecture at the Hoover Institution. “The only time that NATO became an issue was when we decided we would put missile defenses in Poland and Romania and possibly in the Czech Republic. Then he said that it would be a threat. But the idea that NATO expansion was a problem for him is simply ahistorical.”

Equally ahistorical is the assertion by the People’s Republic of China and some pro-Beijing elements in Taiwan that President Tsai Ing-wen and the U.S., rather than the Chinese aggressor, are at fault for heightened tensions in the Taiwan Strait — Tsai because she and her ruling Democratic Progressive Party are supposedly pro-independence forces, and the U.S. because it seeks to contain China for its own balance-of-power reasons by shoring up deterrence in the Strait and the Indo-Pacific region more broadly.

At an U.S.–China Business Council event last month, China’s new ambassador to the U.S., Xie Feng, suggested the biggest threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is the Taiwan government’s “relying on the U.S. to seek Taiwan independence,” and some Americans’ “using Taiwan as a tool to contain China.” China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, as well as Chinese foreign minister Qin Kang and defense minister Li Shangfu, have made similar statements.

This is how the powers that be in Beijing excuse their acts of aggression. We must not fall for it.

Immediately after assuming office as president of China in 2012, Xi Jinping started to evince ambitions of undermining the global order and absorbing Taiwan. In his five-point proposal set forth in 2019, Xi proclaimed his intention to push for unification, seeking to alter the status quo and disrupt peace and stability. This is the sole cause of the escalating tensions we now see in the Taiwan Strait.

Faced with mounting pressures from China, and despite the wholly divergent positions of Taiwan and China on the question of sovereignty, President Tsai has performed a remarkable balancing act in crafting her cross-strait policy. The four commitments that underpin that policy, outlined in her 2021 National Day Address, enjoy overwhelming support among the people of Taiwan.

Under Tsai’s leadership, Taiwan has never provoked nor acted impetuously toward China, even as we’ve managed to garner and maintain the support of allies and friends the world over. And never have we capitulated under pressure, either.

Even though our leading presidential candidate in the polls, Vice President Lai Ching-te, has repeatedly vowed to continue President Tsai’s cross-strait policy, China insists on painting him as pro-independence. Why? Maybe so that Beijing can justify its future aggression if Lai is elected president.

Unfortunately, some in Taiwan have willingly served as the CCP’s flacks and parroted its talking points, accusing the DPP of endangering Taiwan. As we gear up for next year’s general elections, moreover, they seek to exploit Taiwanese fears of the lurking China threat for political gain. For instance, a prominent pro-Kuomintang political talk-show host advised KMT presidential candidate Hou You-ih that if he wishes to attract more young voters, he should pledge to reverse Tsai’s decision last year to lengthen compulsory military service to one year — which Hou did, only to have his campaign manager walk it back a day later. It is such reckless political maneuvering, not responsible and necessary military reform, that imperils Taiwan.

While blaming the DPP for rising cross-strait tensions, Taiwanese CCP sympathizers point to the Ma Ying-jeou administration, when they contend the Taiwan Strait was peaceful and cross-strait goodwill abounded. But times have changed. China’s leadership during Ma’s presidency was relatively moderate, while Tsai faces the newly empowered hard men in Beijing who are hell-bent on imposing “one country, two systems” on Taiwan.

Even as she’s rejected such Chinese designs, Tsai has never pushed for Taiwanese independence — to the chagrin of many DPP supporters. Rather, it’s Xi’s increasingly bellicose posture and asphyxiation of democracy in Hong Kong that are hindering cross-strait ties and escalating bilateral tensions.

China also maintains that visits by high-level U.S. delegations fuel those tensions, while conveniently ignoring that Chinese military maneuvers persist even in the absence of such visits.

It is laughable to suggest that moves made by the U.S. and its allies in response to China’s behavior are to blame for rising cross-strait tensions. If not for Beijing’s myriad acts of aggression in the Taiwan Strait and Indo-Pacific, there would have been little reason for fortifying deterrence by taking such actions as beefing up arms sales to Taiwan, augmenting Taiwan–U.S. military cooperation, and holding ever-larger allied military exercises.

One lesson of the Ukraine war is that, as we like-minded nations act to bolster deterrence in the region, we must make clear to the world and domestic audiences that our actions are not designed to provoke China, but rather to respond to its provocations and expansion. We must also make clear that the causes of increased cross-strait tensions are Xi’s refusal to renounce the use of force against Taiwan and his inexorable drive for regional dominance.

Blaming the U.S. and Taiwan for the consequences of Xi’s actions only serves to exculpate and provide cover for the CCP. Of Taiwan, the U.S., and China, there’s but one actor bent on regional aggression — and it’s not Taipei or Washington. Amid the miasma of autocratic propaganda, we must make sure this truth prevails.