Taiwan learns lessons from Russian invasion of Ukraine

The prospect of Xi following in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s footsteps and trying to grab land across the strait seems more likely than it once did. And Taiwan is preparing more vigorously to preempt that threat, thanks to new U.S. military aid. For the Taiwanese public, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought “some perspective, some reality” to the dangers on their own doorstep, Alexander Tah-ray Yui, Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to Washington, told me.

Last year, Taiwan increased its defense spending by about 14 percent over the previous budget. The training period for mandatory military service was extended from four months to a year. Like Ukraine, Taiwan is seeking to build its asymmetric warfare capabilities in the face of a far larger and more powerful aggressor. And its politicians have also noted the broad commitment of society as a whole that has accompanied Ukraine’s defense, the “civic resilience,” as Yui put it, that underlies the bravery with which Ukrainian forces defied all odds and fended off Russian conquest in the early months of the war.

“People will only help you if you help yourself,” said Yui, whom I interviewed at the historic Twin Oaks estate that was once the residence of the Republic of China’s ambassadors in Washington before it was closed when the United States decided to officially recognize Beijing’s communist government in 1979. “So that’s one of the most important lessons we learned from Ukraine.”

The situation in the Taiwan Strait is always tense, but tensions have increased in recent weeks. China launched aggressive war games to coincide with the May inauguration of recently elected Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, a politician despised as a “separatist” in Beijing, where Taiwan is still viewed as a breakaway province. A barrage of hostile rhetoric toward Taiwan followed. China’s Defense Minister Dong Jun called Lai and his allies in his ruling Democratic Progressive Party traitors to the Chinese people at a security forum in Singapore last month.

At that summit, Dong reiterated China’s new argument about Taiwan – that its leadership, along with its backers in the United States, is seeking a “gradual” separation from China. Taiwan, which has called itself the Republic of China since the island was taken over in 1949 by nationalist forces fleeing the victorious communists, has never officially declared independence from China and most of its population would prefer to maintain the stable, if precarious, status quo.

The country is unrecognized by most United Nations member states and is in a kind of diplomatic limbo – denied access to key international institutions, and yet it has been a source of great affection and concern among U.S. lawmakers and successive U.S. administrations. President Biden alone has approved around 14 arms sales to Taiwan since taking office in 2021.

Over the past three decades, Taiwan has also transformed itself into a prosperous, vibrant multi-party democracy that is at complete odds with the political order in Beijing. Recent polls have found that about two-thirds of Taiwan’s population consider themselves primarily Taiwanese, not Chinese – a fact that contradicts Chinese propaganda that Taiwan and its people are merely an extension of a larger Chinese nation.

“The more (the People’s Republic of China) tries to suppress Taiwan’s internal freedom and our own sovereignty and insist that we are a ‘breakaway province’ of theirs,the more they actually push us away,” Yui told me.

The Taiwanese envoy in Washington pointed to dwindling Taiwanese business investment in China and the cooling of cross-strait economic relations that has set in over the past decade. Yui said it is better for the two countries to “prosper together,” but China “must accept who we are, must accept our existence and treat us accordingly.”

All statements by Xi and the Communist Party elites gathered around him suggest that Beijing has no interest in reconciliation with the DPP ruling in Taipei and views growing American investment in Taiwan’s security as a provocative threat. Unlike the contentious debate over funding for Ukraine, there has been no partisan disagreement in Congress over support for Taiwan so far, and Yui thanked both Democrats and Republicans for their continued commitment to Taiwan’s cause.

In Washington, some experts fear that the US’s extensive support of Ukraine’s war effort is hampering the country’s ability to bolster Taiwan’s defenses. Some politicians argue that the US should focus primarily on countering Chinese expansionism, even if that means allowing Russia to consolidate its illicit gains in Ukraine.

Yui rejected the need for such a compromise. “The US is the world’s leading power,” he said, adding that it “is still capable of dealing with different scenarios, different theaters and different challenges.”

Taiwan’s survival – and ability to thwart or, more accurately, deter a Chinese invasion – has enormous international implications. Yui invoked the principles of a rules-based order, stressing that might should never make right. He also acknowledged the enormous economic risks: As the world’s leading producer of cutting-edge semiconductors, Taiwan is a crucial cog in the global economy and at the heart of countless supply chains spanning the globe.

The war in Ukraine has had an impact on food and energy prices in countries far from Eastern Europe, but that turmoil is likely to pale in comparison to the chaos a Chinese invasion would unleash. “A conflict in the Indo-Pacific would be a much worse scenario,” Yui said.

To that end, he acknowledged that Taiwan and its allies elsewhere need to build a set of fortifications, defense capabilities and diplomatic agreements that will deter Beijing from taking a move like the Kremlin’s in 2022.

“We must ensure that every day when Xi Jinping wakes up,” Yui concluded, “he looks in the mirror and says, ‘I don’t think today is the day for this.'”