And the US has failed to act.

Is time running out?

Welcome to China Uncensored. I'm Chris Chappell.

The Chinese Communist Party has become more  and more aggressive with Taiwan. For instance,  

sending warplanes near the island nation.

Like, a lot of warplanes.

Especially when high level  US officials are visiting.

And that's because the Chinese Communist Party is  in a bit of a fix. In the past it had said, by the  

year 2020, the Chinese Communist Party should be  prepared to invade Taiwan. It basically made the  

mistake of all those old science fiction movies  that were set in the far, far future of 1999.

But the Chinese regime faces another challenge, in  what it calls “reuniting” Taiwan. That challenge  

is the US. The US is showing  unprecedented levels of support of Taiwan.  

Including selling them weapons. 

Like, a lot of weapons.

All the weapons.

So how has this changed China's invasion  plans? I know the person I need to talk to.  

Joining me once again is Ian Easton, senior  director at the Project 2049 Institute.

Thanks for joining me Ian.

Ian, it's always a pleasure to have you on.

Chris, it's a great pleasure to  see you. Thanks for having me.

Definitely. So the Chinese Communist Party said  it would be ready to retake Taiwan by 2020.  

I mean, I guess there's a few months left,  but how likely do you think that is now?

Well, I think happily they're not ready or if they  are, they've decided that they're going to delay a  

potential attack on Taiwan, certainly by this time  of the year, if they have not already mobilized,  

if they're not already prepared to launch  amphibious fleets, and they're not, then their  

window of opportunity has closed. And so Taiwan  is not safe from a potential conflict, of course,  

because there's a lot of other things  that the Chinese Communist Party could do,  

but they are safe from invasion because  from the end of this month forward, the  

sea states that the wind and the wave conditions  and the Taiwan Strait make an invasion virtually  

impossible. And that won't change until  the middle of late March of next year.

So last time you were on the show, we talked  about how Hong Kong in some ways had saved Taiwan  

because the communist party  was so focused on Hong Kong,  

that it wasn't spending as  much effort to threaten Taiwan.  

Now that the CCP has cracked down on Hong  Kong, are things more dangerous for Taiwan?

Yeah, I think it's much more dangerous now. To  your point, the only good thing that has happened  

is that folks in Taiwan, and I think here in  Washington, have started to wake up to the  

threat. They've seen what happened to Hong Kong.  They've seen the backsliding on commitments that  

the Chinese Communist Party made. And they've  seen this really terrible human right atrocity  

with the national security law, which is this  draconian law, which really prevents any real  

freedom of press freedom of assembly. Any of the  freedoms promised to the people of Hong Kong.

I think that served as a wake-up call, and  that's all to the good. The problem is,  

now that the world has been shocked by Hong Kong  and really staggered by what has happened and  

not actually done anything to raise the costs for  some of the Chinese Communist Party's outrageous  

behavior, I'm afraid that it could be the case  that the CCP elite have drawn a conclusion from  

their experience that we really don't want them  to draw. And that conclusion is that they can do  

almost anything. They can have concentration camps  in Xinjiang. They can do this massive crackdown,  

which again, I think really shocked a lot of  people in Hong Kong, and now they can threaten  

Taiwan and no one is going to stand up against  them. And so I'm afraid that for those reasons  

and others, that it's going to be very difficult  to prevent a crisis in the Taiwan Strait.

So even though the window of opportunity  for an invasion this year has passed,  

would you say that we should be more or  less worried about an invasion of Taiwan  

in the next year versus this past year?

Well, I think with every year that  passes the balance of military power, and  

this is not my own assessment, but this is from  the department of defense. And you can read  

the recently published report to Congress on  Chinese military power. They released it last  

month. According to their assessments, China's  military reform and reorganization program,  

which Xi Jinping started in early 2016,  has really changed the nature of the threat  

that the United States faces and that Taiwan faces  from the PLA, the People's Liberation Army. And  

because China really has engaged in this sweeping  military buildup, I mean, it's really remarkable.  

It's actually stunning what they've been  able to do just in the past five years.  

And if those trend lines continue into the  future, as I think we have to expect them to  

do the balance will continue to tip in the favor  of China and that will encourage them to do what  

they've said very publicly they aim to do, and  that is to attack and eventually conquer Taiwan.  

And that's something that could drag us into  a superpower war. So it's very dangerous.

Well, so let's talk about the Chinese war planes  flying over the median line in the Taiwan Strait.  

Before this year, they had done it very  rarely, and now they send something like  

over 40 war planes across the line in  the last few weeks. Why are they doing  

that? Is it to intimidate Taiwan? Or is  there a tactical reason they're doing it?

Well, there's a lot of benefits from them. And you  could look at it from the tactical perspective.  

Every time they do that, they're able to gain  intelligence that whenever they send fighters  

across the Taiwan Strait media line, which they  no longer recognize that now they've officially  

denied that it ever existed. Even though everybody  respected it for really the past two decades,  

every time they do that, they have intelligence  gathering aircraft airborne, which are collecting  

signals and they have Taiwan on a stopwatch.  And they're seeing how long it takes Taiwan  

to scramble its fighters. They're looking at  their characteristics if the Taiwanese turn on  

their air defense radars, which I think might be  tempting for them to do in certain circumstances,  

the Chinese can collect all of that electronic  data and then they can use it in the future for  

deception purposes. They can use it to jam  those radars if they know what frequencies  

they run on. And they can learn more  about their electronic order of battle.

There's a lot of tactical things they can do.  They can also wear down the pilots in Taiwan.  

They can wear down the airframes in Taiwan because  of the time we use military now is to constantly  

be on strip alert, and they constantly have  to have fighter aircraft actually orbiting  

around Taiwan to respond to these incursions  which are happening constantly now. That means  

that those are pilots and those are aircraft  that are not available for training. They're not  

available for professional military education.  They're not available for their other duties.  

And it really wears them down over time. I think  there's been some mixed numbers that have come  

out. One report said that Taiwan now was doing  3,000 sorties a year. Another said 4,000 sorties  

a year in response to, well, over 2,000 Chinese  military sorties around the Taiwan Strait area.

I'm not sure what the actual numbers are,  but if that's true, that is just staggering,  

because that really is going to overtime.  That is going to wear out the pilots. It's  

going to wear out the airframes and it's going  to reduce readiness in Taiwan. Now, of course,  

that's just the tactical issue. There's also the  strategic issue. And the strategic issue is that  

the Chinese Communist Party has decided to  create a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. And  

they have done everything in their power with  their propaganda services, with their military  

exercises across from Taiwan. I mean, there's  recently amphibious landing exercises, which  

they highlighted. And they said explicitly  that they're preparing to invade Taiwan  

in addition to all that aircraft activity.  And in addition to cyber attacks. Taiwan's  

constantly being hit by cyber attacks. And so  there's a lot of provocations going on right now.  

And one of the questions is why. And  that's a question I think that remains open  

to some debate and interpretation,  but it's an important one.

Well, I know China was also previously very  interested in economic or political infiltration  

in Taiwan. And I was in Taiwan earlier this year  for the election and my impression was that China  

was genuinely surprised that Tsai Ing-wen won  re-election. How does that affect their strategy?

Well, it certainly made it much more  difficult for them to infiltrate Taiwan  

and to subvert Taiwan's democratic government  from within. If the opposition candidate had won,  

or if the DPP had not won such a sweeping victory,  because they really did win this crushing victory  

in their parliament in addition to the presidency,  obviously president Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected.  

If that had not happened, if that election had  gone another way, I think that would have been  

very dangerous for Taiwan's national security  because the opposition party has so many  

members whose own behavior in the past, a lot of  which has now come to light, is very questionable.  

And it's very questionable why certain  KMT politicians decided to go to Beijing  

and to sing the national anthem of the people's  Republic of China. Very questionable why one  

of their leading political candidates  is soon to go to the China youth forum  

organized by the Chinese Communist Party,  but refuses to come visit the United States.

And even before the COVID-19 pandemic, they were  refusing to come to the United States and they  

would just constantly go to China instead. I  think those are some worrying signs. Locally  

to your earlier point, what happened in  Hong Kong did wake people up in Taiwan.  

They didn't see the threat of subversion. They  saw what might happen if they elected pro Beijing  

politicians or politicians who might be under  the influence of the Chinese Communist Party and  

could be coerced. And so they voted a different  way. And I think we're very lucky that they did  

because ensuring Taiwan survival as a democracy,  it's not only in the interest, of course,  

of the Taiwanese people, it's also in the interest  of the American people, that if we lose Taiwan,  

our entire strategic posture in Asia will  be devastated by that. It would be the worst  

thing to happen to the United States in terms  of geo-politics. It'd be a worst thing to happen  

since world war II. And so it's really,  I think fortunate for us that Taiwan is  

governed now by administration, which takes  the challenges that they have very seriously.

Well, so on that point. Many countries around the  world are changing their stands toward the CCP.  

And now there are even alliances like  the quad that are forming to counter  

the Chinese Communist Party.  How does Taiwan fit into that?

Well, unfortunately, Taiwan doesn't fit in because  our government policy in many ways is still  

mired in the past. That the way we treat  Taiwan is the same way that we've treated  

Taiwan since the late 1970s, when we  decided to close our embassy in Taipei  

and to de-recognize Taiwan's legitimate  government. And then to recognize the  

Chinese Communist Party government, the People's  Republic of China in Beijing. And since then,  

unfortunately, we've really treated Taiwan in many  ways like a pariah. In some ways we treat North  

Korea better than we treat Taiwan. And it's really  hypocritical because of course, Taiwan is this  

flourishing democracy. It's a very pro-American  country. I've traveled to a lot of places in  

Asia and I can tell you that the Taiwanese  people are about as pro-American as they come,  

and it really is a shame that so far, the  Trump administration has not done a fundamental  

re-look at our Taiwan policy. But having said  that, they have done a lot of good things.

There's been a significant improvement in the  amount of respect that Taiwan has given. There's  

been some high-level state department visits  to Taiwan and of course, arm sales to try to  

support Taiwan's ability to maintain a credible  self-defense. But I'm afraid it's really not  

enough. And if we continue to hold Taiwan at arms  length, Taiwan will just become weaker over time.  

There's a lot more that we could do. I mean,  we could have shipped businesses to Taiwan.  

We could do joint military exercises with the  Taiwanese military to make sure that they're  

actually able to stand side-by-side with  our forces in the Pacific. And if needs be  

defend our common interests from the Chinese  attack. We could have a small number of U.S.  

troops or Marines stationed in Taiwan as  a strategic trip line to make sure that  

Beijing is clear about our intentions  if they invade. There's really a lot  

more that can be done. There's a lot of  opportunities for the future in that regard.

Why do you think those  things haven't happened yet?

Well, they haven't happened  because people are afraid.

Mm-hmm .

Any time there is an election in Taiwan, anytime  there's an arm sales notification to Taiwan,  

anytime there's a U.S. government visit to Taiwan,  or even a tweet about Taiwan, people are terrified  

that that is going to be the trigger  for a war because the Chinese Communist  

Party is constantly making these really radical  threats in that regard. And no one wants to be  

the decision maker, the leader that's responsible  for triggering a potential great power war. The  

problem with that type of reactive policy  is that if you're constantly reacting  

to what the Chinese Communist Party wants, then  you're not advancing towards what you want.

And what we should want, I think is to treat  a fellow democracy like a legitimate country,  

if it is, and Taiwan certainly is. And so then the  question becomes, well, if we're going to do that,  

how do we do that in an innovative way?  How do we do that in a creative way,  

such that we can maintain deterrence? We can make  sure that China doesn't actually come to a place  

where they can consider an invasion of Taiwan a  realistic option or a favorable option for them.  

And we can do it in such a way where we don't  provide them a pretext for actually declaring war  

or just attacking out of the blue. I think  it's going to require a lot more thought.