American intelligence agency CIA reveals that Chinese President Xi Jinping has
ordered the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) to develop the ability to unify Taiwan by
force by 2027. Elaborating on the issue, CIA Deputy Director David Cohen, quoted by
CNN, said that Xi Jinping has not decided to do that yet, but he has asked the military
to prepare it so that he can do what he wants. The overall assessment by the US
intelligence community remains that Xi Jinping prefers non-military means to control
Taiwan. Cohen’s assessment is in line with former US Commander Philip Davidson
and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley last year.
Philip Davidson, the former Commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said at the
end of last year that he was worried that in order to reunify Beijing, there might be
an accident in Taiwan in the next six years or a blockade of the strait. Mark Milley,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussed the assessments with Congress last
year. “Their assessment is based on a conversation with President Xi that asked the
PLA to accelerate its modernization plan to develop its capabilities to capture Taiwan
and to advance its completion from 2035 to 2027,” Milley said. He further said he only
believed that Xi wanted to have the ability to invade Taiwan but had not yet decided
whether to use that ability.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in March, US Indo-Pacific Command Commander
General John Aquilino warned that as Beijing’s ambitions grew and its style became
more daring, the lesson is that an attack on Taiwan is a real possibility, and “we have
to make sure we are prepared for any action.”
PLA Lacks Combat Ability
China has repeatedly threatened Taiwan, saying it will not shy away from using force
if necessary. However, Taiwan has always rejected Beijing’s “one country, two
systems” formulation, believing that only the people of Taiwan can decide their own
future.
At the beginning of last month, the US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi
visited Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) retaliated by conducting largescale military exercises around Taiwan, and the situation in the Taiwan Strait
suddenly escalated. According to external analysis, the PLA’s exercises have exposed
its plan to attack Taiwan, but does the Chinese army currently have the ability to
attack Taiwan?
According to a recent report by the American Defense University, the investigation of
the background of more than 300 senior officers of the Chinese Communist Party in
the past few years revealed the potential fatal weakness of the PLA, that is, lack of
cross-service training, generally staying in the same military service in the early days
of the army, and having a four-star command. Nearly half of the officers were
“professional political commissars” and lacked combat experience.
Compared with US military officers, cross-service training has been required since
- All four-star officers have joint service experience and actual combat
experience. According to the report, problems similar to those of the Russian army
may occur in the Communist Army. If a war is launched, it may follow the Russian
army’s disastrous defeat in the Ukrainian conflict.