by Martin Armstrong, Armstrong Economics:
The Center for Strategic and International Studies conducted an extraordinary survey of 64 leading experts on China, Taiwan, and cross-Strait relations, including 28 former senior U.S. government officials, 23 former government policy and intelligence analysts, and 13 academics and think-tank experts. What their answers reveal is not that China is preparing to invade Taiwan tomorrow, as the neocons would like everyone to believe, but that Beijing remains willing to wait so long as nobody crosses the line of formal Taiwanese independence. Some 84% said Beijing is willing to wait for unification but will not accept the status quo permanently, while only 10% believed China seeks unification at the earliest opportunity. Not one of the 64 experts believed Beijing would ever accept an independent Taiwan.
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This is precisely why Taiwan has become so dangerous. The West keeps portraying the conflict as if Xi Jinping wakes up every morning staring at a calendar trying to decide when to launch an amphibious invasion. Yet 83% of these experts said China did not plan to use significant kinetic force against Taiwan by 2027, and 80% said China’s enormous 2022 military exercises did not indicate Beijing had accelerated its timetable. Only 6% of respondents outside the former senior government group saw 2027 as a hard deadline, while not one former senior U.S. official did. The obsession with 2027 has nevertheless become extremely useful for the military establishment because every supposed deadline becomes another justification for weapons, deployments, bases, and spending.
The survey found that 44% believed Beijing has a hard deadline of 2049, the centennial of the People’s Republic, while 42% believed China could wait indefinitely provided unification remains possible. This is an important distinction because China thinks in terms of generations while Western politicians think in terms of the next election. Beijing does not need to invade Taiwan if economic, political, and military pressure can gradually change the situation in its favor. Only 20% of those surveyed believed China even possessed a coherent roadmap for peaceful unification, which tells us this is not some perfectly scripted invasion plan sitting in Xi’s desk drawer.
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