Horton Hears a Who

Taiwan faces some severe problems in defending their island democracy from absorption by China.

One, China's tremendous economic growth is providing China with the means to create a real invasion threat.

Two, China's size means that Taiwan will, in the long run, probably find that they cannot maintain defense spending high enough to support a military capable of holding off China either on their own or to buy time for allies to help.

Three, China's economic growth has given it clout to erode Taiwan's ability to purchase modern arms that could allow Taiwan to defend itself. Europe has largely checked out of the Taiwan market under pressure from China. Even American support is affected enough to result in narrowing arms choices and delays in sales.

Four, China's military build up threatens, in time, to delay effective American intervention long enough to allow China to conquer Taiwan.

So what is Taiwan to do, given that they cannot, in the long run measured in decades, build and support a military large enough to hold off a Chinese assault determined to win?

It means that Taiwan has to think outside of the conventional thinking of maintaining a military balance. Talk of Taiwan building a "hedgehog" defense that exacts a price on China for taking Taiwan is just a staging area to admitting they can't defend their island. It gives up naval and air power and surrenders passage of the Taiwan strait to China and surrenders their own air space in favor of fighting house-to-house in a Stalingrad scenario. But going this route merely succumbs to the military reality without looking for a real alternative to the military route to maintaining Taiwan's independence.

One alternative, in an approach the closest to the standard defense outlook, would be for Taiwan to build a nuclear deterrent and hope that China believes Taiwan would really nuke China rather than lose a conventional war.

Thinking further outside the conventional outlook would be to recognize that the best way to halt being absorbed into China is to convince China that they don't want to own Taiwan. How could the Taiwanese do that?

One measure would be to seek regime change in China. If China was no longer a unitary communist police state that uses nationalism over Taiwan to maintain public support, would China still want to attack Taiwan and take it? Could Taiwan actually engineer an information campaign that stokes anger at the Peking rulers to such an extent that China breaks up into multiple states that lack the means or will to take Taiwan?

Or could a campaign result in a revolution that brings real democracy to a Peking-run united China? At worse, being taken over by a democracy is certainly less disastrous for Taiwan than being absorbed by China as it is now.

Perhaps a more promising measure to ensure survival is to leverage China's tourist invasion of Taiwan in a form of foreign policy judo. Could Taiwan engineer an advertising campaign on Taiwan aimed at Chinese tourists able to see Taiwan first hand for the first time and able to hear what Taiwanese really feel? Could that campaign emphasize that the Taiwanese actually like being independent?

I've read that Chinese propaganda emphasizes the "fact" that the Taiwanese really are eager to rejoin the mainland but for those darned rulers. In effect, the Chinese people on the mainland can't hear what the Taiwanese are saying on that tiny speck of dust off their coast. What if Taiwan could spread the word through these personal visits by Chinese that the Taiwanese like being friends with China, but do not want to lose their independence?

Could such a campaign, supplemented by advertising this reality on the mainland as much as Chinese censorship allows, slowly lead the Chinese people to hear the truth and so fail to respond to a nationalistic appeal to rally around the autocrats to "recover" the island? Might the Chinese people begin to see Taiwan as a friendly trading partner and potential ally rather than one more small province added to China?

The appeal should be friendly and cheery, with no threats at all directed at China, aimed at emphasizing the Taiwanese will to be free, their pride in their democracy, and their determination to defend it.

Keeping the military balance from sliding too fast toward China would be important to buy as much time as possible to allow the non-military information offensive to have an effect on Chinese thinking about Taiwan.

The Taiwanese must argue that a country's a country, no matter how small.

UPDATE: Thanks to Mad Minerva and The View from Taiwan for links.