Speaker 1: On Wednesday, we talked about the Israel Hamas war and
Speaker 1: the intense negotiations for the release of more hostages. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Russia's war in Ukraine is heading toward another brutal winter
Speaker 1: with no end in sight. Behind the scenes in Washington, though,
Speaker 1: it's China's military that's increasingly on the minds of leaders
Speaker 1: at the Pentagon and State Department. Of particular concern to
Speaker 1: the US the possibility that China might one day launch
Speaker 1: a military invasion of Taiwan.
Speaker 2: China has carried out what it says is a mock
Speaker 2: air blockade of Taiwan using jets carrying live ammunition, in
Speaker 2: the latest escalation of tensions in the South China.
Speaker 1: Sea by Bloomberg's Peter Martin reports that despite the billions
Speaker 1: of dollars China has spent building advanced weapons and modernizing
Speaker 1: its forces, there are doubts at the most senior levels
Speaker 1: of China's military and government that the People's Liberation Army
Speaker 1: is ready for battle.
Speaker 3: Skimping has undertaken an extraordinarily wide ranging set of reforms
Speaker 3: aims at modernizing the PLA, but there's every sign that
Speaker 3: he's dissatisfied with how far the effort has gotten.
Speaker 1: I'm West Kasova today on the big take just how
Speaker 1: mighty is China's military Peter. The world's attention lately has
Speaker 1: been on the war between Israel and Hamas and at
Speaker 1: the same time the long ongoing or in Ukraine. Why
Speaker 1: are you taking this deep close look at China's military
Speaker 1: capability now?
Speaker 3: Well, I think there are a couple of things. I
Speaker 3: think one is that you get the sense when you
Speaker 3: talk to senior US officials that they know the long
Speaker 3: game is in East Asia. I think the other thing
Speaker 3: that emerges from both of those conflicts is that these
Speaker 3: things can come out of nowhere. So the war in
Speaker 3: the Middle East at the moment was something which took
Speaker 3: Israeli intelligence by surprise and took the US government by surprise.
Speaker 3: Putin's decision to invade Ukraine is something that the intelligence
Speaker 3: agencies did know before, but certainly that the Biden administration
Speaker 3: wasn't planning or having to deal with.
Speaker 1: And so, as you say, inside the US military and
Speaker 1: intelligence establishment, this is something that they're concentrating on.
Speaker 3: If it was up to them, this is all they
Speaker 3: will concentrate on. So Pentagon leaders walk around saying that
Speaker 3: the PLA the People's Liberation Army. China's military is what
Speaker 3: they say is the pacing challenge. That phrase is a
Speaker 3: little bit sort of stodgy and uncomfortable, but it does
Speaker 3: really relay the sense of urgency that they have about
Speaker 3: China's rising threat. I think the issue that worries Pentagon
Speaker 3: planners most is a Taiwan scenario, the possibility that China
Speaker 3: could at some point try to invade the democratically governed
Speaker 3: island of Taiwan. And for Chinese leaders this is their
Speaker 3: top priority. They've described this as something that's central to
Speaker 3: their plan for national rejuvenation.
Speaker 1: And Pete remind us what is the nature of the
Speaker 1: conflict between China and Taiwan.
Speaker 3: So, Taiwan is a democratically governed island of about twenty
Speaker 3: million people off the coast of China. It's been ruled
Speaker 3: by parties other than Beijing for most of the last century.
Speaker 3: But the Communist Party leadership in China believes very firmly
Speaker 3: that it is a breakaway province and should once again
Speaker 3: return to the fold of the motherland.
Speaker 1: And of course Taiwan's government is opposed to reuniting.
Speaker 3: Yeah very much though and increasingly the Taiwanese public doesn't
Speaker 3: want to reunify with China.
Speaker 1: And over the years, we've seen any number of times
Speaker 1: when tension between China and Taiwan, and tension between China
Speaker 1: and the US about Taiwan has risen sharply and then
Speaker 1: fallen in And there seems to be a concern right
Speaker 1: now that it's on the uptick again.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right, partly because I think Beijing believes that
Speaker 3: their chances of persuading the Taiwan these people that they
Speaker 3: should quote unquote return to China is diminishing, and their
Speaker 3: confidence in their own military abilities is at the same
Speaker 3: time increasing.
Speaker 1: And your story really takes a look at this possibility,
Speaker 1: no matter how remote, at the moment, that China may
Speaker 1: choose to take military action against Taiwan, And which you
Speaker 1: look at in the story is how capable is China's military?
Speaker 1: So maybe tell us about China's military capability.
Speaker 3: So this is really one of the big unknown questions
Speaker 3: when it comes to the US's competition with China. I
Speaker 3: don't think anyone doubts that the People's Liberation Army has
Speaker 3: made incredible progress over the last two or three decades.
Speaker 3: So if you look at the raw numbers, the PLA
Speaker 3: looks almost invincible. China has two million active duty troops
Speaker 3: compared to about one point three million in the US.
Speaker 3: It has a three hundred and fifty ship navy, giving
Speaker 3: it the biggest navy in the world, and it has
Speaker 3: the third largest aviation force in the world with about
Speaker 3: two eight hundred planes. What's even more concerning from Washington's
Speaker 3: perspective is that China's military capability is increasingly modernized. They
Speaker 3: have an extraordinarily well equipped rocket force, which is capable
Speaker 3: of taking out US ships and surface vessels. They have
Speaker 3: a capable fourth generation aircraft, and they have a space
Speaker 3: force and cyber capability which is growing day by day.
Speaker 3: The question comes when you look at whether China would
Speaker 3: be able to use all of these things together to
Speaker 3: achieve something like an amphibious landing on Taiwan or a
Speaker 3: peer to peer war with the US.
Speaker 1: But you kind of asked this basic question, is China
Speaker 1: actually prepared to fight? Can they effectively use all of
Speaker 1: these assets if the time came right?
Speaker 3: And I think the truth is that they don't know,
Speaker 3: and leaders in Washington don't know. The Chinese military hasn't
Speaker 3: fought a major conflict since nineteen seventy nine, when it
Speaker 3: fought a brief and largely unknown and pretty punishing war
Speaker 3: against Vietnam. Since then, most of the officers who took
Speaker 3: part in that campaign, or even the junior people, have retired,
Speaker 3: which means that virtually no one in the senior ranks
Speaker 3: of Chinese military has combat experience. So that's one of
Speaker 3: the big worries that kind of gets the Chinese leaders.
Speaker 1: Pete, You right, that the US is conducting wargames where
Speaker 1: they try to imagine various scenarios of how a China
Speaker 1: invasion of Taiwan might play out. What exactly are they
Speaker 1: looking at?
Speaker 3: They're trying to assess what are the PLA and the
Speaker 3: US military's relative strengths and weaknesses. So if China were
Speaker 3: to invade, for example, would it be able to land
Speaker 3: troops on the beach, would it then be able to
Speaker 3: supply them with the logistics that they need for a
Speaker 3: sustained campaign on the island. How well would its air
Speaker 3: force hold up overhead? How capable would its submarines be
Speaker 3: of deterring US involvement. All of these things go together
Speaker 3: in an incredibly complex picture which is very very challenging
Speaker 3: to pull off.
Speaker 1: And when they're doing these war games, what are the scenarios?
Speaker 1: How do they think China might choose to go about
Speaker 1: taking over Taiwan with military force.
Speaker 3: There are a few different scenarios that worry US planners.
Speaker 3: I think the most ambitious effort that China could undertake
Speaker 3: would be an amphibious landing on the island, which is
Speaker 3: where you use landing vessels kind of like DDA to
Speaker 3: put troops ashore and then to push on and conquer
Speaker 3: a territory. That's extremely difficult. There are others which fall
Speaker 3: short of that, which are in some ways more worrying.
Speaker 3: A naval blockade of the island, for example, could be
Speaker 3: very very difficult. And then there are scenarios outside of
Speaker 3: Taiwan which worry US military leaders. There's the possibility of
Speaker 3: a clash with the US in the South China Sea,
Speaker 3: where China has extremely expansive claims to territory, or that's
Speaker 3: the possibility of an unintended clash when interset between two aircraft,
Speaker 3: for example, leading to an inadvertent, unintended war.
Speaker 1: And we've seen those sorts of close calls happen over
Speaker 1: the years in the South China Sea. Now we're starting
Speaker 1: to see a rising conflict between China and the US
Speaker 1: over the Philippines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right. These incidents have been on the rise.
Speaker 3: It's something that Pentagon leaders have been warning about publicly
Speaker 3: and especially during attention to the fact that the communication
Speaker 3: channels between the two militaries are very very weak, which
Speaker 3: means that there's the possibility that an inadvertent clash could
Speaker 3: spiral into something much larger at very short notice.
Speaker 1: During the Cold War and even for many years after,
Speaker 1: the US and the Soviet Union and then Russia had
Speaker 1: what they called these deconfliction lines, which allowed the two
Speaker 1: countries to communicate quickly in a time of christ.
Speaker 3: Right, and that's something that's really lacking at the moment
Speaker 3: in US China relations. China has tended to view any
Speaker 3: contact between the two militaries as kind of a goody
Speaker 3: that it can happen out or rescind according to whether
Speaker 3: it's happy with the US or not. The US says
Speaker 3: that that's a dangerous stance, but it's nevertheless one that
Speaker 3: Beijing's taken. It's kind of interesting. If you talk to
Speaker 3: Pentagon leaders, they say they'd like to get to the
Speaker 3: stage where the US was with the Soviet Union after
Speaker 3: the Keep and Missile crisis, but ideally without a scare
Speaker 3: threatens to destroy mankind in the meantime.
Speaker 1: When we come back, why Hi Jinping is the toughest
Speaker 1: critic of China's military readiness peep you spell out how
Speaker 1: the US military and intelligence establishment is assessing China's military capability,
Speaker 1: but you write that within China there is a very
Speaker 1: deep concern about its own military capabilities.
Speaker 3: One of the best ways to look at this from
Speaker 3: China's perspective is to delve into the speeches of Chinese leaders,
Speaker 3: especially She Jinping, but also into people's liberation army publications.
Speaker 3: They're turgid, their hard work, they're sleep inducing, but they're
Speaker 3: incredibly rich and rewarding. If you take the time to
Speaker 3: go through them, and She's speeches, I think give the
Speaker 3: clearest picture of all. And you know, it tends out
Speaker 3: that actually the harshest and most unforgiving critic of China's
Speaker 3: military is China's President she Jinping, who is at the
Speaker 3: same time head of the country's armed forces.
Speaker 1: And when you look at these criticisms that she has
Speaker 1: issued of the military, is he actually saying.
Speaker 3: I'll give you a sample from twenty fifteen, a phrase
Speaker 3: that he called the five cannots. She Jimping said that
Speaker 3: PLA officers are unable to effectively judge situations. They're incapable
Speaker 3: of understanding authorities intentions, they struggle to make operational decisions,
Speaker 3: they have difficulty deploying troops, and they experience problems when
Speaker 3: dealing with unexpected situations. So that's effectively everything you would
Speaker 3: need to perform effectively in combat. Xi Jinping says that
Speaker 3: his officers are lacking in pete.
Speaker 1: These five cannot like, they cannot do these things. According
Speaker 1: to Xi Jinping, is just one of the many sort
Speaker 1: of catchphrases that he's used in leveling criticisms at the military.
Speaker 1: What are some of the others.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is like a favorite way that she
Speaker 3: uses to communicate with the Chinese bureaucracy, these sort of
Speaker 3: damning indictments of what it's not capable of doing. So
Speaker 3: you've got the five connats, you have the two big gaps,
Speaker 3: the five excesses, the four bad styles. All of these
Speaker 3: things have been directed toward China's military. One that particularly
Speaker 3: concerns him, I think is what he dubs the peace disease,
Speaker 3: which is this idea that China's military has not fought
Speaker 3: in combat for a long long time and may prove
Speaker 3: incapable of doing so.
Speaker 1: And why does he think that the military isn't capable?
Speaker 1: Do they conduct war exercises the way most armies do
Speaker 1: to test their readiness.
Speaker 3: I think that there are a few different things. One
Speaker 3: of them centers on the ability to conduct what are
Speaker 3: called joint operations, which is where you have different parts
Speaker 3: of a military working together. It's something that the US
Speaker 3: spent decades working on after the failures of the Vietnam
Speaker 3: War and didn't really perfect until maybe the mid nineties
Speaker 3: or even early two thousands. She is acutely aware that
Speaker 3: China's forces struggle to do this. It's only recently introduced
Speaker 3: the joint command structure, but it's very early on in
Speaker 3: the implementation of that process. But it's absolutely something that
Speaker 3: would be necessary if you were to do something like, say,
Speaker 3: invade Taiwan with amphibious forces, using naval vessels, using cyber
Speaker 3: capabilities and air force overhead. That's one of the really
Speaker 3: pressing challenges.
Speaker 1: And pte Jijinpink's criticism of the military isn't justin speeches
Speaker 1: in on paper. He's actually taken action to shake up
Speaker 1: the top ranks of China's military.
Speaker 3: Right Chikimpink has undertaken an extraordinarily wide ranging set of
Speaker 3: reforms aimed at modernizing the PLA. He has purged top
Speaker 3: offices from its ranks. He's ordered the military to continue
Speaker 3: its exit of for profit businesses. He's reduced the number
Speaker 3: of PLA ground forces in large part because he doesn't
Speaker 3: think they would be very useful in any scenario that
Speaker 3: China's actually likely to find itself in. And he's also
Speaker 3: brought on board a whole range of new capabilities, from
Speaker 3: cyber warfare to outer space capabilities. So he's undertaken this
Speaker 3: wide ranging set of reforms to modernize the PLA, but
Speaker 3: there's every sign that he's dissatisfied with how far the
Speaker 3: effort has gotten. So the suorrest sign of that is
Speaker 3: the mysterious disappearance of China's Defense Minister Leishalloo over the summer,
Speaker 3: someone who was handpicked by Shejinping to lead the country's
Speaker 3: defense ministry and shortly after taking office found himself purged.
Speaker 3: We've also seen in the last year turmoil inside the
Speaker 3: PLA Rocket Forces, which in some ways are the crown
Speaker 3: jewel of China's military, and a continued anti corruption campaign
Speaker 3: right through the ranks of China's military, which is an
Speaker 3: effort that she Jinping began a decade ago, where he
Speaker 3: still clearly is unhappy with the progress that's been made.
Speaker 3: So I think those things speak to the degree of
Speaker 3: his concern about the state of the PLA. I think
Speaker 3: it's also really important to put yourselves in the shoes
Speaker 3: of a Chinese military officer or an enlisted member of
Speaker 3: the Chinese military and think about what does it mean
Speaker 3: to have your boss removed, purges through the ranks above
Speaker 3: you absolutely no idea who you're supposed to be loyal to,
Speaker 3: whether your current or past associations could get you in trouble,
Speaker 3: land you in jail. These things are absolutely lethal to
Speaker 3: the effectiveness of bureaucracies, and it's something that at the
Speaker 3: moment is endemic to China's political system and especially to
Speaker 3: its military. You also have this shortcoming which in many
Speaker 3: ways is baked into the way that China's political system works.
Speaker 3: It's an incredibly top down political system, and the PLA
Speaker 3: is an incredibly top down institution even for a military
Speaker 3: and that's something which is kind of a necessary part
Speaker 3: of the way that it's designed. It is not China's
Speaker 3: national army. It is technically the armed branch of the
Speaker 3: Chinese Communist Party, and that's who it answers to, So
Speaker 3: that makes it very, very different to most military forces
Speaker 3: in the world. It's something that puts Si Jinping in
Speaker 3: an incredible position of authority. But it's also something which
Speaker 3: means that the Communist Party, which always has an eye
Speaker 3: on whether or not it's going to be able to
Speaker 3: stay in power for the long term, is constantly looking
Speaker 3: at its troops and thinking how loyal are they to
Speaker 3: our system? And it has a bunch of ways that
Speaker 3: it enforces that which I think that US service members,
Speaker 3: for example, would find pretty alien. One of them is
Speaker 3: the political commissar system, which means that all military commanders
Speaker 3: are kind of shadowed by a Communist Party boss who
Speaker 3: kind of second guesses and has a say in all
Speaker 3: military decisions. And you can imagine how on the battlefield
Speaker 3: that might be something that was really disorientating and confusing.
Speaker 3: You also have the fact that all service members have
Speaker 3: a political dossier written about them to evaluate their loyalty
Speaker 3: to the system, and this is something which has not
Speaker 3: really played out in combat for a long long time.
Speaker 3: But when you talk to some of the dozens of
Speaker 3: experts who exist in Washington, it's something that they think
Speaker 3: would be really, really crucial. So I talked to Andrew Scobell,
Speaker 3: for example, from the US Institute of Peace, and he
Speaker 3: said that when it comes to command and control, China
Speaker 3: is very much focused more on the control aspect rather
Speaker 3: than the command, and that's something which could really hamper
Speaker 3: it in battle.
Speaker 1: I'll add here that officials at China's defense industry didn't
Speaker 1: respond to Bloomberg's request for comment on the PLA's readiness
Speaker 1: and its capabilities. And while China has repeatedly said it
Speaker 1: isn't planning to invade Taiwan, the government doesn't rule it out. Pete.
Speaker 1: You report that these questions about China's military readiness have
Speaker 1: taken on new urgency in Beijing as China sees what's
Speaker 1: happening to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which the Russians and
Speaker 1: even the US thought would probably end pretty quickly and
Speaker 1: yet has gone on for many, many months with no
Speaker 1: end in sight.
Speaker 3: This is something that US intelligence leaders have addressed very directly.
Speaker 3: CIA Director Bill Burns has talked about how Xi Jinping
Speaker 3: has probably looked at the performance of Russian troops in
Speaker 3: Ukraine and it's given him pause about his own ability
Speaker 3: to conduct operations in Taiwana against the US. And it
Speaker 3: is really important actually to remember the psychologically for the
Speaker 3: Chinese military, the Soviet Union and then Russia has always
Speaker 3: been there is kind of this big, powerful figure that
Speaker 3: has more advanced technology and needs to be emulated. The
Speaker 3: Russian military has experience fighting in Syria, in Chechnya, in Ukraine,
Speaker 3: something that Chinese troops lack, as we've talked about, and
Speaker 3: yet they found themselves caught short when it came to
Speaker 3: their ability to combine to operations in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Also, the structure of China's military, as you described as
Speaker 1: being very top down, this has also been one of
Speaker 1: the big Achilles heels for Russia, which is a top
Speaker 1: down structure and didn't have the ability to respond quickly
Speaker 1: on the battlefield, whereas Ukraine's army has been very innovative
Speaker 1: in trying to fight off a superior force. Right.
Speaker 3: One of the things which US military leaders believe is
Speaker 3: critical to modern warfare is the ability for lower levels
Speaker 3: of military command to take decisions on the fly. There
Speaker 3: was talk in the two thousands about something called the
Speaker 3: strategic corporal, the idea that someone at that lower level
Speaker 3: would really be able to take the initiative. That is
Speaker 3: absolutely antithetical to the way that the Chinese and Russian
Speaker 3: political systems work. They have a built in preference for
Speaker 3: not trusting their own people. They know that they need
Speaker 3: to overcome that, but at the same time, there's almost
Speaker 3: no sign that they're going to be able to do it.
Speaker 1: After the break, would the US come to Taiwan's defense?
Speaker 1: You've spelled out all the different ways that China's president
Speaker 1: is dissatisfied with the military. Are they now taking steps
Speaker 1: to fix all of these problems that tap down culture
Speaker 1: the questions about their inability to fight?
Speaker 3: I think that China's leadership since the beginning of Si
Speaker 3: Jimping's term as president, has been focused on doing this,
Speaker 3: and they are making progress on all of these fronts.
Speaker 3: Question is has it gone far enough and do they
Speaker 3: have the capabilities to achieve the goals that they're looking
Speaker 3: to achieve. I think the truth is that they have
Speaker 3: made progress on almost all of these fronts. The PLA
Speaker 3: is continuing to modernize at a very impressive pace. It's
Speaker 3: hardware continues to get better. They're trying to address things
Speaker 3: like their ability to do joint warfare and combined operations,
Speaker 3: and they're getting there slowly and surely. But the truth is,
Speaker 3: and I talked to John Culver, who spent thirty five
Speaker 3: years as the CIA's lead analyst of the People's liberation
Speaker 3: at ME and he said, no one knows how ready
Speaker 3: they are or how capable they are. It's a huge unknown.
Speaker 1: And Pete, what about Taiwan's capability? Would they be able
Speaker 1: to withstand a military attack from China for any length
Speaker 1: of time?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think it's fair to say it would
Speaker 3: be a pretty substantial mismatch in capabilities. Taiwan has been
Speaker 3: moving in a direction that the US has been pushing
Speaker 3: for a long time, which is to acquire what they
Speaker 3: call asymmetric abilities, are kind of things like sea mines
Speaker 3: or defenses on beaches that would keep the PLA out.
Speaker 3: That's been a slow process, and Taiwan is not where
Speaker 3: it needs to be. In short, the US would need
Speaker 3: to get involved if the island stood a chance of
Speaker 3: defending itself. Taiwan has fewer than two hundred thousand full
Speaker 3: time troops, so that's obviously a far smaller numbered in China,
Speaker 3: and I think it's fair to say they would be
Speaker 3: very unmatched in a fight.
Speaker 1: And of course that's what Russia thought about Ukraine, and
Speaker 1: yet just resolve and ingenuity seems to have been able
Speaker 1: to beat them back. Is that irrelevant comparison.
Speaker 3: I think it's relevant in so far as an invasion
Speaker 3: would be incredibly challenging for China. But I think that
Speaker 3: the really difficult part for them would be landing on
Speaker 3: Taiwanese beaches and then maintaining and supplying those beachheads, which
Speaker 3: is where a naval battle would come in.
Speaker 1: In Washington, a lot of people are talking about the
Speaker 1: possibility of a military invasion happening in twenty seven, But
Speaker 1: is there a reason to put a lot of faith
Speaker 1: in that date.
Speaker 3: I think that there are really important reasons to be
Speaker 3: cautious about any number like that. What's really important to
Speaker 3: understand is that there are a lot of people who
Speaker 3: would like more of the US defense budget, and as
Speaker 3: a result of that, there's an incentive for folks to
Speaker 3: put dates out there which allow them to justify getting
Speaker 3: more money or different types of equipment to galvanize Congress
Speaker 3: into action. So there's a lot of politics behind any
Speaker 3: number that's put out there. The twenty twenty seven date
Speaker 3: has kind of taken on a life of its own.
Speaker 3: It's something which has now been clarified by the intelligence community,
Speaker 3: and they say that they have information that she Jimping
Speaker 3: wants his forces to be capable of taking Taiwan in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty seven, but they don't have evidence that he
Speaker 3: has a plan to do that. I think the thing
Speaker 3: that really worries leaders here, though, is less a specific
Speaker 3: piece of intelligence which talks about this or that date,
Speaker 3: but a general sense that She Jimping's appetite for risk
Speaker 3: is vastly greater than his predecessors, and that makes it
Speaker 3: very difficult to predict the way that he might act
Speaker 3: next year, five years out, or a decade out. And
Speaker 3: it's something which makes Washington's leaders very self conscious when
Speaker 3: they think of how they're performing in Ukraine, or in
Speaker 3: the Middle East, or with a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Is
Speaker 3: this something that she jinping is going to look at
Speaker 3: and assess how likely the US would be to intervene
Speaker 3: and say a Taiwan crisis and PTE.
Speaker 1: That really is the big question. Is there an appetite
Speaker 1: in the US for a military confrontation with China.
Speaker 3: This is something where US officials tie themselves in not
Speaker 3: trying to answer because President Biden's words in many ways
Speaker 3: conflict with the official policy. The ofvisual policy is that
Speaker 3: there is one China, that Taiwan is not an independent nation,
Speaker 3: and that whether or not the US would intervene to
Speaker 3: aid Taiwan is something that's going to remain ambiguous, deliberately ambiguous.
Speaker 3: President Biden, on the other hand, has talked multiple times
Speaker 3: in public about how the US would come to Taiwan's aid.
Speaker 1: Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan
Speaker 1: if it comes to that, Yes, you are. That's a
Speaker 1: commitment we made.
Speaker 3: So this is something which remains kind of unanswered.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I think that as Xi Jinping looks at that question,
Speaker 3: he's likely to judge that there's very low appetite. The
Speaker 3: US withdrew from Afghanistan. It has supported Ukraine with security assistance,
Speaker 3: but has been absolutely clear that it's going to put
Speaker 3: no troops on the ground. Partly because Putin has nuclear weapons,
Speaker 3: and Xi Jinping therefore has decided to continue increasing his
Speaker 3: own force of nuclear weapons. I think that when Chi
Speaker 3: Jinping looks at the United States, and I've talked to
Speaker 3: senior US officials about this, there's this belief that he
Speaker 3: probably has, which is that this is a tired power
Speaker 3: which is risk averse and doesn't want to put its
Speaker 3: troops in harm's way. I think he looks at things
Speaker 3: like Obama's failure to deliver on the Red Line in Syria,
Speaker 3: the actions taken by the West after Putin's partial invasion
Speaker 3: of Ukraine in twenty fourteen, the response of Western countries
Speaker 3: to his encroachments in Hong Kong, which in many ways
Speaker 3: took the world by surprise. He looks at all of
Speaker 3: these things as signs that America doesn't have the stomach
Speaker 3: for the kind of fight that it would need to
Speaker 3: engage with China over the Taiwan question. And all of
Speaker 3: that begs the question, maybe the PLA will never get
Speaker 3: to a stage where it's the equal of the US military,
Speaker 3: But if it can get to a point where it
Speaker 3: can deliver enough damage, enough lethality that it deters the
Speaker 3: US from fighting, then maybe that'll never be put to
Speaker 3: the test.
Speaker 1: And this is something that we've seen for years that
Speaker 1: in Washington there was this very loud in public concern
Speaker 1: about a possible invasion of Taiwan, but China experts always
Speaker 1: said there's a very remote possibility because it would be
Speaker 1: such a costly war.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right. You'd be thinking of potentially tens
Speaker 3: of thousands of young Chinese people sent into combat, risking
Speaker 3: their lives, a huge impact on China's economy and on
Speaker 3: the global economy that would have the potential to imperil
Speaker 3: Chinese growth. I think that a full scale invasion of
Speaker 3: Taiwan is something that we would likely see coming for
Speaker 3: quite a long time. It would involve massive mobilization of
Speaker 3: China's economy, a build up of troops off the coast
Speaker 3: of Taiwan. It's not something that could happen overnight. I
Speaker 3: think what worries people in Washington more is something short
Speaker 3: of that, say, an invasion of one of the offshore
Speaker 3: islands that Taiwan administers but are closer to China. Something
Speaker 3: like preemptive air strikes or the initiation of a blockade.
Speaker 3: None of those things are easy, but they could happen
Speaker 3: much more quickly and arguably could be pulled off more
Speaker 3: easily by the PLA, and so I think those things
Speaker 3: are likely front of mind for people here. I think
Speaker 3: the thing that really gives China analysts and senior US
Speaker 3: officials pause is the idea that she Jimping is a
Speaker 3: risk taker and you never quite know what he's going
Speaker 3: to do next. I think very few people thought at
Speaker 3: the outset of his term that he would end up
Speaker 3: abolishing term limits for the Chinese presidency, that he would
Speaker 3: respond to the situation in Shinjag in the way that
Speaker 3: he has, that he would take the kind of action
Speaker 3: against Hong Kong that he has. So he's someone who
Speaker 3: has an appetite for risk, and so the idea that
Speaker 3: maybe maybe he'll take that chance here it gives great
Speaker 3: cause for concern. And that's exactly why there is so
Speaker 3: much attention on what China is doing and on what
Speaker 3: the US is doing to prepare for any eventuality.
Speaker 1: Pete, thank you always great to tag to you.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to.
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