With Hundreds of Reasons for Peace, Why Choose War?

The conflict between China and the United States is essentially a power struggle — one between an emerging power and a power with vested interests. China does not necessarily wish to challenge American dominance, but the logic of Western history dictates that a strong country must seek hegemony. The U.S. wants to do all it can to prevent China from surpassing it, but China’s energy, the speed of its growth, its development potential and its resilience have long since outstripped U.S. imagination.

In order to salvage its supremacy, the U.S. has put China under immense pressure; for its part, China has traded strategic patience and time for space on the one hand, while preparing for the worst via a last-ditch mentality of “casting away illusions and fighting bravely” on the other. China is not afraid of challenges from the U.S.

The dispute between China and the U.S. is a power shift, featuring the decline of U.S.-led Western powers and the rise of China-led non-Western forces. It is a phenomenon that has been amply demonstrated in the first two decades of the 21st century, and it has been particularly noticeable in the past two years. This structural change is irreversible.

As its national power wanes, the U.S. emphasizes values and ideology. But in the international community, the reality is geopolitical changes and power shifts, not imagined or sentimental fantasies. China’s achievements are the fruits of productivity and governance performance — the pragmatism of socialism combined with capitalism — and have nothing to do with ideology. The U.S. only exposes its own shortcomings by using ideology to disparage China, an effort that is both unjustified and futile.

Since the United States’ strength alone is insufficient, it has formed cliques and traveled the world to establish an anti-China alliance, threatening that the world economy will be hit hard with $3 trillion in global losses if war breaks out in the Taiwan Strait. The U.S. government and its military leaders have also repeatedly declared that if China attacks Taiwan with military force, China will suffer heavy losses and be subject to sanctions 500 times greater than those imposed on Russia in relation to Ukraine. The U.S. has even warned China that, since the People’s Liberation Army has not seen active combat in more than 40 years, it would be very difficult to launch amphibious attacks on Taiwan. But the U.S. has never said that it would win a war in the Taiwan Strait, and in the Defense Department’s military projections, at least, it would suffer a crushing defeat.

In point of fact, China has the home advantage in the Taiwan Strait. Not only does China have the largest navy in the world, but the range of Chinese missiles extends to both the first and second island chains for precision strikes. Within 500 miles of Taiwan, a range in which aircraft do not refuel, China has more than 40 airports, more than 1,000 fighter jets, and three aircraft carriers, whereas the U.S. has only one airport with about 100 fighter jets at Kadena, Okinawa, and only one naval base at Yokosuka, Japan, 370 and 1,240 miles from Taiwan, respectively. In the event of a war in the Taiwan Strait, American aircraft carriers would have to retreat to a distance of some 2,400 miles; otherwise, if one of them were to be struck by a missile, between 5,000 and 6,000 officers and soldiers would sacrifice their lives. To the Communists, a Taiwan Strait war would be decisive from the start, and no U.S. military base in the Western Pacific would be spared. If the U.S. dared to attack China, China would retaliate in kind, and it would result in nuclear war. The U.S. would be destroyed, while China’s armaments, which have been underground for 70 years, would survive. If it only came to traditional war, productivity and manufacturing would be what we would rely on. China’s manufacturing industry is currently twice that of the U.S., with supply chains extending across the globe and accounting for more than 50% of the world’s strategic materials, steel, aluminum, rare metals, and shipbuilding. By contrast, the U.S. ranks only in the single digits, perhaps as little as 1% or 2%.

Some scholars in the U.S. have repeatedly warned that avoiding a war with China is in the best interests of the United States — indeed, that this would be an avoidable war. Xi Jinping and certain American scholars have also questioned the rationale for choosing war when there are hundreds of reasons why China and the U.S. could coexist peacefully.

The United States cites a host of justifications for accusing China of wrongdoing, such as not abiding by the international order (referring to American laws), foreign aggression (is it not said that China hasn’t fought a war in more than four decades?), undermining peace in the Taiwan Strait (Taiwan is Chinese territory; who is the one undermining peace in the Taiwan Strait?), but there is only one real reason: to prevent China from overtaking the U.S. This is why the U.S. has determined to engage in long-term competition with China, and though the competition may be fierce, war is definitely not an option. The U.S. has repeatedly stated that it has no intention of clashing with China (its “four don’t and one no-intention” statement), but on the issue of Taiwan, if not handled with care, it will still be difficult to avoid conflict.

The author, John Kuan, is a former president of Taiwan’s Examination Yuan.