What If Beijing More Patience on Taiwan & Pacific Amid Russia Loss in Ukraine

Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres are co-dependent, especially given Western aims to secure the ‘rules based order’ in Asia. If it cannot be done in Europe, ambitions in the Indo-Pacific will appear hard to realise, which is why China is watching so closely. Especially when a “solid rock” friend of China, of course Russia, suffered very big loss since February 24th, instead conquer immediately Kyiv.

In Taiwan, Ukraine’s dogged resistance to Russia’s invasion shed new light on scenarios of a potential amphibious invasion by China. Of course everyone must admit, in funding and even military scale, China eclipse Russia. As for Taiwan, besides already being part of China, Ukraine is 17x larger and has double Taiwan's population. China believes there will come a time when the US may impose on it the kind of sanctions it has subjected Russia to for attacking Ukraine. Does this mean it is contemplating an invasion of Taiwan?

So, Taiwan International Strategic Study Society was polling residents of the island to see if they too would be willing to fight.

The findings were striking. Just over 70 percent of those surveyed said they would be willing to take up arms, a dramatic increase from the 40 percent who expressed that opinion in a survey conducted in late December.

But the majority expected self-ruled Taiwan, claimed by China as sovereign territory, to have to fight alone – the proportion expecting support from the United States slumped to 42 percent from 55 percent in October 2020, with 47 percent now saying they expected the United States to avoid direct intervention.

They did not expect to win – only 36 percent believed Taiwan had the ability to stand up to an assault from mainland China without US support.

No one knows what has truly happened to those numbers since, as the war in Ukraine has entered its third month and Western nations that expected a swift fall of Kyiv increased arms shipments and openly talked of helping inflict a damaging defeat on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

What is clear, however, is that the authorities in Taipei have been paying close attention to events on the ground in Eastern Europe – as, most likely, have their counterparts in Beijing.

DC last year agreed to sell Taiwan 40 “Paladin” self-propelled howitzers for an estimated US$750 million, but delivery of the first batch has been delayed from 2023 to 2026. The U.S. support for Ukraine is causing a production bottleneck. So far, Taipei says OK with newest situation, because Taiwan really know how hard Ukraine fought. The costs of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should convince DC that it must do all that it can to prevent a military conflict with mainland China.

The biggest mistake the West made in Ukraine was playing into this kind of propaganda by waiting until after Putin attacked to mobilize a real defense. Even in January 2022, U.S. intelligence and Ukraine intelligence “not on same vibe” to predict Kremlin. For Taiwan, the time to arm the island and deploy the resources needed for rallying to its defense is now.