Military, economy key to deterring China invasion of Taiwan: U.S. Congressman
ROC Central News Agency
03/01/2023 09:37 PM
Washington, Feb. 28 (CNA) The U.S. should arm Taiwan as part of its efforts to establish a more "sensible" military posture in the Indo-Pacific region while decreasing its economic reliance on China to deter the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from mounting an attack on Taiwan, U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher said on Tuesday.
Gallagher, who chairs the House's Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, made the remarks when being asked by reporters in the U.S. to give his assessment of the cross-strait situation and how to de-escalate it after a House hearing titled "Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and China."
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has made known his "genuine desire" to effectuate "re-unification" between China and Taiwan by force if necessary, and has repeatedly said that he does not want to pass the Taiwan problem on to the next generation of CCP members, the Wisconsin Republican said.
"We would be foolish to discount the idea that invading Taiwan or re-unifying Taiwan with China is a legacy issue for Xi Jinping that would put him on par with Mao Zedong as a paramount leader of the Chinese Communist Party," he said.
"I think the risks are increasing. I don't think time is on our side and I think we're in the window of maximum danger right now," he said.
"But I also think we can prevent it from happening if we work together to arm Taiwan, if we work together to put in place a more sensible force posture throughout the Indo-Pacific as well as have a coherent economic strategy that makes us less dependent on the CCP in the event of a kinetic conflict. I think we can convince Xi Jinping that his goal is simply not achievable by military force," he said.
When asked whether he considered China to be a bigger threat than the Soviet Union was - a topic raised during the hearing - Gallagher said he did, partly because unlike with China, the U.S. and the Soviet Union never became "economically entangled."
"We never had to contemplate selective economic decoupling, because our economies didn't interact," he said.
A second reason was that Xi has had the benefit of studying the Soviet Union's demise and learning from its mistakes, so he does not repeat them, he said.
"So for those two reasons, at least, I do think it is a far more complex and formidable threat than the Soviet Union was," he said.
Asked whether there were any updates on his plan to hold a select committee hearing in Taiwan, Gallagher said: "I do not have any update now. I would love to take the committee there in a bipartisan fashion at some point but we don't have anything scheduled right now."
According to a report by the Washington Post published on Feb. 22, 2023, Gallagher intends to hold the hearing in Taiwan hopefully before summer and report to U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is also mulling a visit to Taiwan this year, according to an exclusive story by U.S. news outlet Punchbowl News on Jan. 23.
Gallagher said that he just returned to the U.S. from a visit to Taiwan from Feb. 17 to Feb. 20 and is in the process of giving a debrief on his findings there.
He said he would like to consult with his committee members over whether and when they would like to visit Taiwan, adding that such a trip would involve members across different committees and from both sides of the aisle if it were to go ahead.
Asked whether he has shared his findings in Taiwan with McCarthy and whether the California Republican has decided when to visit Taiwan, Gallagher said that he did, but that he did not know whether or when McCarthy would visit.
The security situation in the Taiwan Strait was among the issues discussed at the hearing, the first since the committee was established in January.
Former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger said that China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has been receiving massive amounts of investment, in an effort to fill gaps that they need to fill in order to successfully invade Taiwan.
It includes amphibious lifts, ships, and helicopter lifts to get soldiers and equipment on the ground, more missiles adding to the thousands already pointing at Taiwan, and the capability to threaten and keep the U.S. out of the fight long enough for Xi to make it a fait accompli, said Pottinger, who testified at the hearing.
Asked by U.S. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi whether he could envision a scenario where China launched a preemptive attack on America, Pottinger said "it's possible."
"We know that the PLA is training for the likelihood that the U.S. would be part of the fight. And that raises the escalatory pressure on China to try to eliminate the U.S.'s capabilities right there in the western Pacific to buy them time," Pottinger said.
In his remarks, H.R. McMaster, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general who also testified at the hearing, raised the issue of the delays in U.S. arms deliveries to Taiwan, when asked what lessons from the failure of deterring Russia's invasion of Ukraine could apply to Taiwan.
Hard power matters much more than pledges of more capabilities on the ground and integrated with the Taiwanese armed forces, he said.
"As all of you know, there is a US$19 billion backlog of what the Taiwanese have already purchased to make that island indigestible and to achieve deterrence by denial, by convincing the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party they cannot accomplish their objectives to the use of force," he said.
(By Chiang Chin-yeh, Shih Hsiu-chuan and Sean Lin)
Enditem/AW
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