Taiwan Security Chief Predicts Violent Chain Reaction If China Attacks

A forceful takeover of Taiwan by the Chinese military would cause a violent chain reaction beyond Asia and lead to "unbearable losses" for the global economy, Taipei's national security adviser said on Monday.

"Because if China captures Taiwan by force, against the will of the Taiwanese people, China's global dominance may rise, but so would authoritarianism," Wellington Koo told Taiwanese current affairs program Real Talk. "Not a single country, inside or outside the Indo-Pacific region, would feel safe."

Political and military leaders in Taipei have spent decades trying to deter an amphibious invasion across the Taiwan Strait. And while the probability of an imminent attack remains low, rarely has the island, and its neighbors, made such urgent defense preparations as in the 10 years that China's assertive president, Xi Jinping, has ruled in Beijing.

Late last year, President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan cashed in on her significant political capital to extend the draft from four months to one year, with new recruits set to train under the longer regimen starting on January 1, 2024. In August, her cabinet proposed a defense budget hike to a record $19.1 billion, roughly 2.5 percent of Taiwan's GDP and a 7.7 percent year-on-year increase.

Perhaps more importantly to the United States, which has been Taiwan's strongest international backer for seven decades, American officials and their Taiwanese counterparts said they now shared an understanding of Taipei's need to adopt asymmetric warfare, by acquiring or developing more mobile, survivable and lethal weapons to counter China's overwhelming conventional forces.

Communist Party leaders in Beijing have long claimed Taiwan as part of China's territory and refuse to rule out the use of force against the island to achieve national unification. In August, the Chinese government published a new standard map that reasserted its intention "not to give an inch" in the east and South China seas and on its southern border with India, Koo said.

Koo told program host Grace Liao that if Taiwan were to fall under China's control, it would put the national security of Japan, a U.S. treaty ally, under "imminent danger." Meanwhile, neighboring South Korea, another U.S. ally, would worry about an emboldened regime in the north.

Littoral states on the South China Sea, including U.S. treaty ally the Philippines, would likely question their ability to stand their ground against China if Taiwan falls to Beijing, he said. India, too, would face a less compromising China that could afford to devote more resources toward the long-standing border dispute.

"For the United States, a rupture in the first island chain would mean American forces have to operate outside the second island chain, or as far as Hawaii," the Taiwanese official said. "America would lose its leading position in the Western Pacific."

Koo said: "Taiwan's position as a fulcrum in the first island chain means that its loss would have a very, very severe impact. In addition, Taiwan plays an important role in economic security, whether that's a key position in the semiconductor [supply chain], or the fact that half of the world's seaborne trade passes Taiwan [each year]."

"If Taiwan is lost, the global economy would suffer unbearable losses, including for China, which would pay quite a heavy price from the resulting economic sanctions or from the war itself," he said.

"That's why everyone should try to avoid such a situation. But whether China's leaders are rational enough to understand this unbearable cost, that's what every country worries about while China's decision-making remains opaque under Xi Jinping's one-man rule."

Koo, who has served as secretary-general of Taiwan's National Security Council since 2020, is expected to leave his post when Tsai's second term ends next May.

Taiwan is less than three months away from its presidential and legislative elections, on January 13. Whoever wins, the island's next leader is unlikely to roll back Tsai's defense reforms, Koo said.

"It would be unimaginable if, while China repeatedly emphasizes it will not renounce the use of force against Taiwan, and given Xi Jinping's one-man rule and expansionist and authoritarian nature, that Taiwan could hope to walk back its yearlong conscription to four months in exchange for peace," Koo said.

"That's capitulation," he said.