On the menu today: One of the most confounding challenges of interacting with China is how much its system and decision-making are a black box — those of us on the outside have little sense of what the internal deliberations are and whom Xi Jinping is really listening to, if he’s listening to anyone. Even more bizarrely, in the past few months, several top Chinese government officials have suddenly disappeared; one day, they stopped making public appearances and showing up at meetings, and their replacements were announced months later. It looks like something akin to a purge is occurring within the top level of the Chinese government, with Xi Jinping removing anyone he’s not 100 percent certain is completely loyal to him. Meanwhile, the U.S. has been giving the Taiwanese military some significant equipment upgrades, including one that might make China’s new stealth fighter seem a lot less stealthy. One Taiwanese defense-policy expert warned us, “I can assure you, whoever is the president of Taiwan next year, cross-strait relations are not looking good.”
‘We Can Never Trust Them, because They Don’t Even Trust Themselves’
First, mainland China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, disappeared from public sight in June.
Then about a month later, the commander of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, Li Yuchao, disappeared, too. The unit’s political commissar, Xu Zhongbo, vanished with him. The unit — with the unfortunate acronym ‘PLARF’ — controls China’s arsenal of land-based ballistic, hypersonic cruise missiles — both nuclear and conventional.
Then, Defense Minister Li Shangfu disappeared at the end of August. He’s a particularly curious case, as he had only recently made his appearance on the international stage in June at a defense summit in Singapore and struck a bellicose tone at the event, refusing to meet with U.S. defense secretary Lloyd Austin and warning the U.S. to “mind its own business” in his remarks.
That’s four major high-level officials disappearing from the public eye within a three-month span. What’s going on over there in China this summer? Alien abductions?
Earlier this week, my group of international journalists met with experts affiliated with Taiwan’s Prospect Foundation, a think tank focusing on cross-strait relations and international affairs that has close ties to the Taiwanese government.
Kuo Yu-Jen, a professor at the Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies at National Sun Yat-sen University, told us, “Whatever happened with the defense minister, it has nothing to do with corruption. It has something to do with leak of intelligence, and the level of intelligence [that was leaked] is very high.”
Kuo noted that the leak may not have come from Li himself, but from someone in his family, his secretary, or one of his subordinates – but whoever was responsible, the leak was serious enough for Xi Jinping to conclude that Li was no longer trustworthy or reliable.
Dr. Wen-hsuan Tsai, a research fellow at the Institute of Political Science in Taiwan, wrote that in one of the cases, the line between allegations of corruption and an intelligence leak may be blurry:
Qin Gang as an example. He allegedly had an affair with a female news anchor and fathered an illegitimate child. However, having mistresses is not uncommon among Chinese officials. It is possible that the arrest of Qin Gang was related to the sale of intelligence to the United States. Even if Qin was not personally involved in this matter, it is likely that his mistress, Fu Xiaotian, learned some Chinese diplomatic secrets from him and passed them on to U.S. intelligence during their relationship. This is no longer a matter of inappropriate personal style; rather, it is closely related to the national security of China.
“The CCP today isn’t just a one-man party, it is an absolutely top-down governing style,” Kuo said. He pointed to little signals indicating that Xi believes other high-ranking officials exist to implement his decisions, not to influence or advise him. “If you look at Li Qiang, the premier of China, for his foreign visit, he boarded a regular flight, not the ‘Air Force One’ of China. If you look at the previous premier, Li Keqiang, for his foreign visits, he boarded the Air Force One of China.”
Today’s China is centered on Xi Jinping alone.
Kuo said the removal of Li Yuchao and the changes at the rocket force indicate that Xi Jinping wants to prioritize political and personal loyalty to him within the top ranks of the PLA.
“If you understand what the Rocket Force is, it is the strategic force for PLA, meaning it is not conducting the frontline battle,” Kuo said. “It is more like it is the key to battlefield management. It is a most vital and most important force in PLA. Today’s [new replacement] commander and deputy commander of Rocket Force, one is from the Air Force and other is from Navy — they are not rocket professionals. The reason why Xi Jinping put them in those positions is they are from the political-warfare division. They are there to do more investigations. So, the drama in the Rocket Forces is not ended yet. You will see further developments.”
That assessment was echoed by Albert Chiu, a political-science professor at Tunghai University in Taiwan.
“I think that’s going to happen a lot, it’s going to be unpredictable,” Chiu said. “They cannot really send a trustworthy or reliable delegation to talk with us. I think Taiwan should be prepared for that kind of trick, if you will, or those kinds of incidents. There is a saying, ‘We can never trust them, because they don’t even trust themselves.’ We should be very careful. Don’t take their words too much, don’t read too much into it.”
You can imagine the complications of trying to build a relationship or rapport with a Chinese official, whether it is in a diplomatic or military-to-military context, and the frustration of learning the guy you spent months trying to build a relationship with just disappeared one day, with little explanation as to why he’d been sacked.
Taiwan holds a presidential election in January of next year, but most of the experts we’ve talked to on this trip don’t expect any dramatic changes to the status quo, because the dynamics of the current tense situation across the Taiwan Strait reflect the circumstances and stance of Beijing, not the policy preferences of any particular Taiwanese leader.
“No matter who the new president is, cross-strait relations cannot [get] better,” Kuo said. “Starting from 2024 to 2028, those four years are the high tide for U.S. government to deliver all the weapons and equipment that were procured by Taiwan.”
One of the Trump foreign-policy decisions that has gotten little attention is the expansion and accelerating pace of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, a trend that has continued under President Biden. Kuo said this list includes 66 F-16V fighters, 108 M1-A1 Abrams tanks (both agreed to in 2019), and up to 400 Harpoon missiles (agreed to in 2020).
“All of those weapons will be delivered in the coming three to four years, and they will make China very unhappy,” Kuo said. He noted that no matter who wins the upcoming election, “You cannot reverse the procurement contracts, because they’ve already been paid.”
Kuo continued, “All of these Chinese aircraft and military vessels circulating [around] Taiwan, it is not a political signal, unlike last year [when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan].”
Just yesterday, the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense detected 19 People’s Liberation Army aircraft and six People’s Liberation Army Navy vessels that had crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone. These sorts of incursions have become a daily occurrence for the Taiwanese military. The day before yesterday, China had nine aircraft and six vessels cross the median line, and the day before that, it was ten aircraft and five vessels.
Kuo said the “high tide” of Chinese military exercises near Taiwan this year was in response to the U.S. government announcing Taiwan would be a new recipient of the Pentagon’s foreign-military-financing program. Under this program, the U.S. transfers military equipment to allies, usually sovereign nations. At the end of August, the Biden administration announced it was transferring about $80 million worth of military equipment to the Taiwanese.
Perhaps even more consequentially, the F-16s that Taiwan is flying will be getting an advanced air-defense system called IRST pods, short for Infrared Search and Track: “Taiwan’s new and upgraded F-16Vs have the cutting-edge APG-83 scaled agile beam radar to combat stealth aircraft. The IRST will permit F-16V fighter jets to effectively detect stealth aircraft, small drones, and other targets without switching on the radar and avoid detection.”
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force has put a lot of time and money into developing the Chengdu J-20, its own stealth fighter. Now, those stealth aircraft will be a lot less stealthy when flying in the same airspace as their Taiwanese counterparts:
Not only do IRSTs improve flight safety, but when mounted on the 4.5-generation F-16Vs, they would boost the jets’ ability to detect Chinese J-20 fighter jets — a fifth-generation stealth aircraft — narrowing the performance gap between the two, said Chieh Chung, an associate research fellow at Chinese Nationalist Party think tank the National Policy Foundation.
Due to the J-20s specially designed fuselages that reduce radar reflections, when a radar system picks up the signal of a J-20 it is often closer than indicated, Chieh said.
With the help of the IRSTs, pilots would be able to determine earlier how close the enemy aircraft are, thereby gaining more response time, Chieh said.
“That was a very specific decision by the U.S. government to support the Taiwanese armed forces, which angered China,” Kuo said, noting that the day after the decision was announced, more than 100 PLA aircraft crossed the median in the Taiwan Strait.
“I can assure you, whoever is the president of Taiwan next year, cross-strait relations are not looking good,” he concluded.
ADDENDUM: Wow, thanks to everyone who started following my Instagram account, where I’m posting my pictures from my time here in Taiwan. The city of Taipei is a remarkable mix of sights, almost all on top of one another. You’ll have an extremely modern, state-of-the-art skyscraper right next to a classic, ornately decorated temple right next to a 7-11 — these are everywhere, and apparently much better quality than we’re used to in the U.S. — right next to office buildings that were built in the 1970s and 1980s that look run down and have air-conditioning units stuck out of every other window. Longtime readers know I’ve travelled quite a bit in Europe and the Middle East and reported from a lot of places, but this is my first trip to Asia, and it is a visual, auditory, and olfactory cacophony and buffet table, almost too much to take in all at once.