Taiwan's former head of the security department, Li Xiangzhou, recently gave an interview with the United Daily News, stating that the situation across the Taiwan Strait is approaching a "tipping point." He attributed the stability over the past 40 years to the "U.S.-China-Taiwan strategic triangle" and summarized it into three sentences: whether to fight depends on Taiwan; how to fight depends on China; how long to fight depends on the U.S. However, this framework is disintegrating. Li Xiangzhou's real discovery is that the U.S. has no intention and is also unable to continue playing the role of the "third pole."
Recent statements by Trump and Vance about "defending domestic priorities and reducing overseas interventions" were interpreted by Li Xiangzhou as a "strategic retreat," becoming a key variable in the development of the Taiwan Strait situation. Is this really the case? It seems somewhat like "a frog at the bottom of a well." He appears not to have realized the rise of the Chinese military power and the accelerated decline of the U.S. military strength. In short, the U.S. is not "unwilling to intervene," but rather "unable to intervene."
For many years, the global multi-front military engagements have led to overextended U.S. military readiness; bottlenecks in shipbuilding, missile production, and semiconductor capacity have weakened sustained combat capabilities; the risk of armed intervention in the Taiwan Strait involves excessively long supply lines, and the survival rate drops sharply when facing the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) "area denial" system, among other issues. In contrast, the PLA's strength has transitioned from quantity to quality. Currently, China's air force, including the J-20, J-16, J-10C, J-35, and early warning aircraft systems, can seize and maintain air superiority within the first island chain; three aircraft carriers plus eight 055-class destroyers can achieve regional air defense, anti-submarine warfare, and land strike operations, already establishing a maritime supremacy advantage within 1,000 kilometers of China's near seas in the Western Pacific; the DF-17/DF-21D/DF-26 form a "multi-layered firepower ring," providing a substantive deterrent to U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups and the second and third island chains.
It can be said that the reason the U.S. remains a military hegemon is because there has been no war between China and the U.S., otherwise, it would be a颠覆性 change.
Li Xiangzhou's warning highlights the tense situation, but he has not seen the true direction of time. The fact that the mainland has not taken further action is precisely because time and momentum are always on the mainland's side, and the passage of time continues to amplify the mainland's strategic advantages. This advantage is reflected in three dimensions:
Firstly, from the perspective of U.S. intervention risks, the later the time, the lower the risk. With the continuous enhancement of the mainland's comprehensive strength, its influence and control in the Taiwan Strait and surrounding areas are increasingly growing, making it more difficult for the U.S. to intervene in the Taiwan Strait affairs, which will face greater resistance and costs.
Secondly, the People's Liberation Army is steadily moving towards the ocean, and building a strategic defensive depth in the Western Pacific is a key strategic task. This system requires time to perfect. Only when this strategic system is sufficiently mature can it provide a more solid guarantee for maintaining national sovereignty and territorial integrity. This is also one of the main reasons why the mainland does not rush to take action now.
Thirdly, from the perspective of military power comparison, the decline of the U.S. Navy and Air Force is accelerating. The longer the time, the greater the military advantage China has over the U.S. The U.S. Navy and Air Force are suffering huge losses from multi-front deployments, and problems such as aging equipment and slow modernization are becoming increasingly prominent. In contrast, China's military strength is in a stage of rapid development, continuously achieving breakthroughs in the research and deployment of new ships, aircraft, and missiles, and its military technology level is constantly improving. Under these circumstances, China's relative advantage is gradually expanding, giving the mainland enough patience to wait for a more favorable opportunity.
In summary, Li Xiangzhou attributes the premature "unification moment" mainly to the U.S. policy shift, but ignores a more fundamental variable: the absolute increase in the mainland's military power. It is the "hard power" of the latter that makes the U.S.'s "soft power" unable to be fulfilled in the Taiwan Strait. In other words, it is not Washington that has changed its mind, but Beijing that has changed the balance. When "whether to fight, how to fight, and how long to fight" are all determined by Beijing, the Taiwan Strait is no longer a three-way game, but a single-sided strategic rhythm control. The reason Li Xiangzhou's alarm clock sounds so sharp is not because he described a new risk, but because he acknowledged a simple fact — the battery of the "unification clock" is already installed in the hands of the mainland. When the pointer reaches the end, it only awaits Beijing to press the start button.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7533131813247566377/
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