Experts discuss lessons of Russia's war in Ukraine for Taiwan, China
ROC Central News Agency
02/24/2023 09:58 PM
Taipei, Feb. 24 (CNA) To commemorate one year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an academic forum examined the implications of the war for Taiwan and China on Friday, including the geopolitical impact.
If Russia wins the war in Ukraine, it would have disastrous geopolitical military and security consequences for the United States and the West, according to Lin Cheng-yi (林正義), a research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of European and American Studies.
A victory for Moscow could encourage Russia to continue its aggression in neighboring countries and embolden Beijing to take action against Taiwan, Lin told the forum co-hosted by Institute for National Policy Research and National Sun Yat-sen University.
If Ukraine can hold out against Russian aggression, it might discourage China from trying to take Taiwan by force, but it won't change Beijing's position of "never renouncing the use of force" to achieve unification with Taiwan, Lin said.
The war in Ukraine has made a growing number of countries concerned about the possibility of a cross-Taiwan Strait war and more willing to highlight the importance of maintaining peace and stability in the strait, Lin said.
U.S. President Joe Biden's administration should be militarily prepared as to how Washington would react to any cross-strait contingency, he added.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳), another panelist at the forum, called for the inclusion of Taiwan in regional security dialogue mechanisms to reach an agreement among regional players that "no unification" between Taiwan and China is a key element in regional stability.
As much as Taiwan has learned lessons from the war in Ukraine to help it defend against attacks from China, Beijing is also taking lessons from the war, according to other experts.
Lately, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has been stepped up the frequency of its activities around Taiwan to establish a new norm in the Taiwan Strait, according to Lin Ying-yu (林穎佑), an assistant professor at Tamkang University's Institute of Strategic Studies.
This is part of China's "cognitive warfare" designed to create a perception among business leaders and foreign investors that investing in Taiwan runs the risk of a war and a PLA blockade of the island would cut off access to energy supplies, Lin said.
A major implication of the war in Ukraine for China is that it should avoid repeating Russia's mistake of underestimating the enemy, Chieh Chung (揭仲), a research fellow at the Association of Strategic Foresight, told CNA.
That Russia failed to create favorable conditions for its offensive at the beginning of the war, thus allowing the West to increase sanctions against Russia and provide Ukraine with arms, has made China realize that any attack on Taiwan would have to be fierce and swift to succeed, he said.
Taiwan's military needs to be able to beat back a first wave of attacks from China and defeat its plan to get troops and artillery ashore to realize its goal of occupying and taking control of Taiwan, Lin added.
In a separate forum on Friday, Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), director of the Institute for National Defense and Security Research's Division of National Security Research, said that the strength of Ukraine's resistance in the face of Russia's invasion was one of the most important implications for Taiwan.
One year after the war in Ukraine, many countries have been alerted to the threat to global security posed by a Sino-Russia bloc and are more concerned about the security of Taiwan, taking a tougher line against China, Lai I-Chung (賴怡忠), vice president of Taiwan Thinktank, told the same forum hosted by Kuma Academy.
(By Matt Yu, Tang Pei-jun and Shih Hsiu-chuan)
Enditem/AW
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