Xi’s playbook for China is different from what U.S. thinks, scholars say

WASHINGTON — When Adm. Philip Davidson told Congress in March 2021 that China may take military action against Taiwan “in the next six years,” 2027 became known as the “Davidson timeline.” The words of the then-leader of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command were perceived to be based on intelligence and dominated the discussions in Washington.

Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden’s pick to be the next Indo-Pacom commander, Adm. Samuel Paparo, told Congress that the 2027 timeline is “nothing other than the 100th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army,” and that the U.S. military, in general, always must be ready to respond.

Deciphering China’s actions, statements and motivations can be hard. Some U.S.-based scholars are calling for a deeper look at China’s political dynamics, especially how domestic politics influence foreign policies.

For instance, China’s nuclear arsenal expansion is one of the highlights of the Pentagon’s 2023 China Military Power Report. It estimates that China will have over 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030 and that Beijing would probably “consider nuclear use to restore deterrence if a conventional military defeat in Taiwan gravely threatened [Chinese Communist Party] regime survival.”

Tong Zhao, a senior fellow with the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, cautioned looking at Chinese nuclear development from a purely military perspective.

“China’s nuclear buildup is not driven by clear military logic. It is driven by political logic,” he said in an interview.

“China’s current leadership appears to think that if China can demonstrate greater strategic and military capabilities, especially nuclear capabilities, then that would help convince Washington that Beijing has already become a powerful country.”

In Beijing’s eyes, such a perception would help dissuade Washington from trying to contain China, Zhao said. “In other words, the current political leadership in Beijing thinks China needs to demonstrate its strategic capability as soon as possible because that will help compel the United States to adopt a more conciliatory policy towards China across the board.”

“So there is political value in building up and demonstrating capabilities and nuclear is part of that effort,” he said. “But the security-policy community here [in Washington] does not follow China’s domestic politics. They tend to think, ‘Yes, China is building up so China must have a new nuclear strategy.’ I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.”

From Zhao’s perspective, the balance of power is the most crucial driving force behind Beijing’s calculations. And the reason that Chinese President Xi Jinping has opted for stabilizing U.S.-China relations since a summit with Biden in November, is because the balance of power is shifting in a negative direction. One reason is the slowing economy. The other is the “blunders” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zhao said.

“Internationally, China’s closest partner, Russia, is in such a big quagmire as a result of the Ukraine war. That weakens China’s sense of the balance of power. The future prospect looks very bleak for Russia.”

Overall, Beijing may be developing doubts about their previous assessment that the West is declining and the East is rising, Zhao said.

But Zhao was also critical of Washington think tanks that are overly sympathetic to China. “They tend to have a very idealistic view toward China. They tend to see the troubles in the relationship being caused by U.S. hegemonic intentions.”

These analysts, Zhao said, “don’t have the extensive experiences in living in today’s China. China as a country has undergone profound internal changes in recent years,” he said. That change is toward a much more authoritarian system.

“That has had a huge impact on China’s world view. It is the direct driver of China’s wolf-warrior diplomacy,” he added.

A B-21 Raider in Palmdale, California. U.S. assets that can counter China’s military modernization are planned to come into mass production in the 2030s.   © Reuters

Meanwhile, in a new book, “Deterrence Gap: Avoiding war in the Taiwan Strait,” Air War College assistant professor Jared McKinney and Colorado State University associate professor Peter Harris argue the layers of deterrence that once constrained Beijing from invading Taiwan have expired, decayed or have degraded.

On the Taiwan issue, Beijing traditionally thought that time was on their side, McKinney said in an interview. “Time, in relation to Taiwan, might not solve any problems. It could cause problems,” he said.

For instance, Taiwan’s exports to China accounted for 35.25% of the total in 2023, the lowest share in 21 years.

“Taiwan and China aren’t going to grow more interdependent,” McKinney said. “Peaceful unification, from China’s perspective, doesn’t seem like it’s on track. Strategic patience, on China’s part, is less likely. Nationalist impatience is more likely.”

McKinney also said an invasion of Taiwan will be more difficult for China after 2032. From that year on, “U.S. modernization cycles are going to be catching up with Chinese advances, and Japanese modernization cycles will be catching up as well,” he said.

America’s next-generation assets, such as the B-21 bomber and the Columbia-class ballistic nuclear submarine, have a 2030s timeline to come into mass, he said. The same goes for the hypersonic-guided missiles and stand-off missiles specified in Japan’s three defense documents of 2022.

“So just in terms of the balance of power, in a rationalist calculation, for Beijing, the least-bad time seems to be in the short to medium term,” McKinney said.

Under such an environment, pursuing tech decoupling with China may trigger a dangerous response, McKinney warned.

Preventing China from having access to Taiwan’s advanced semiconductors could mean that China misses out on the current evolution in military affairs centered on artificial intelligence and computing.

“If this appears to be the case, that would imply that five, 10 years from now, everyone but China is going to have an intelligent military and a decisive advantage on the battlefield. China will be left behind,” McKinney said. The Chinese call this an “intelligentized” military.

McKinney and Harris say that such a scenario is a mistake for deterrence.

“What makes sense for great power competition doesn’t make sense for deterrence. Because we think the situation is dangerous, we think that deterrence is more important than great power competition,” McKinney said. “And this means that economic interdependence is important, because it rewards continued peaceful interaction while offering an implicit threat of loss were war to occur.”