(March 19): Taiwan identified 2027 as the potential year for a Chinese invasion for the first time in its annual military drills, as concerns grow on the self-ruled island about tensions with Beijing.
The Taiwanese Defense Ministry unveiled the date in a document released on Tuesday to brief lawmakers on upcoming war games simulating an attack by the Chinese military. The exercises will also double in length to 10 days this summer, reflecting an increased emphasis on military preparedness in the democracy that China claims as its territory.
No previous plan for Taiwan’s biggest annual live-fire drills in at least a decade specified a year for a potential Chinese invasion, according to public documents seen by Bloomberg. Despite that, Defence Minister Wellington Koo appeared to play down the naming of a date.
“The Han Kuang Exercise always sets a timeline of one to two years in the future, because the acquisition of new weapons and training require repeated drills for validation,” he told reporters on Wednesday, as he prepared to address lawmakers.
It’s unclear how the 2027 setting will change the programme of the drills, or whether the date is actually more of a political signal.
Focusing this year’s exercises on 2027 could be a tactic to get past a stalemate in Taiwan’s split Parliament, where opposition parties are challenging certain military spending plans, according to Jack Chen, a director of Formosa Defense Vision, an advocacy group. “This could make the opposition parties and the public feel that increasing the military budget is an urgent necessity,” he added.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has set the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) the goal of becoming a “modern military” by 2027, and a world-class force by 2047. US officials have claimed as recently as last year that China is preparing to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, citing as evidence Beijing’s build-up of fighter aircraft, warships and move to double its inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles since 2020.
Taiwanese officials have previously dismissed that US assessment, with Koo saying in 2023 that China wouldn’t be ready to carry out amphibious landing operations. Corruption purges that have roiled the upper echelons of the PLA have also raised questions about Chinese troops’ ability to fight a war.
The Pentagon said in an annual report to Congress in December that corruption investigations could hinder Xi’s modernisation goals and shake Beijing’s confidence in its high-ranking PLA officials.
Since Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te took office last May, Beijing has been ramping up pressure on the self-ruled democracy. It has conducted two large-scale military exercises around Taiwan and sent warplanes over a de facto boundary line on a regular basis.
US President Donald Trump has asked the island to ramp up its defence spending, and refused to say whether he would defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, in an apparent return to Washington’s long-standing stance of strategic ambiguity.
Beijing said it held military drills around Taiwan earlier this week, days after Lai gave a speech that made him the island’s first president to officially designate China a “hostile foreign force”.
China has also sharpened its rhetoric. Wang Huning, Beijing’s No 4 leader who oversees Taiwan affairs, has urged his nation to “shape the inevitable reunification of the motherland”, while over the weekend the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily newspaper called Lai a “cornered dog”.
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