China's Xi Jinping Could Knowingly Start a War Without Victory

Taiwan needs to increase its deterrent military strength because Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping does not need to believe he must win in order to start a war. The West’s demonstrated failure to inflict sufficient battlefield costs on the Russian army in Ukraine, to block Russian energy exports to Europe, or to target sanctions on Russia’s elites and consumers, means that Beijing sees a lengthy war of attrition as a viable strategy against Taipei and its allies. Recent policy choices in China demonstrate that the survival, or even the legitimacy of the CCP, will not depend on a victorious amphibious landing, as it did with Argentina in its invasion of the Falklands Islands in 1982. Xi’s increasingly successful authoritarian pattern of rule, including his prioritization of his personal control over the CCP, and consolidation of military backing, shows that the party will be resilient enough to bear the economic costs of an extended campaign. This can be seen in Xi’s exploitation of policy challenges as opportunities for public demonstrations of CCP power, regardless of cost.

There are two effects. First, Xi’s need to demonstrate authority leads him to formulate brutally unsophisticated policies, as he tries to control the uncontrollable, such as his zero-Covid policy. Second, according to Xie Fanping’s 謝凡平 account 常委治國 (Governed by Politburo Standing Committee), Xi buttresses his political strength by prioritizing the backing of the military, in exchange for military influence on foreign policy, especially over Taiwan.

Xi is disregarding the conventional wisdom that the CCP should be focusing on Chinese economic growth, despite the likelihood that China’s GDP may have already plateaued in 2018. Xi’s demonstrations of CCP power are visible in Beijing’s zero-COVID approach in Shanghai, inflicting widespread economic disruption in what is the powerbase for his principal adversary, the Jiang Zemin faction (in power 1993-2003). Justified by the low vaccination rate among China’s elderly, Xi pushed this policy through the CCP’s Central Committee meeting on April 29, 2022, with the consequence that not a single car was sold in Shanghai that month. Left to fester, the failure to deal decisively with the Omicron outbreak, may produce new factors黑天鵝 灰犀牛, that could imperil Xi’s stature at the upcoming 20^th National Congress, in late 2022.

Xi also uncompromisingly pursued the 2020 triple-red-line crack-down on the unstable housing bubble, as well as a policy that has dramatically slowed CO2 emissions since 2010. The accelerating trend in outsourced manufacturing from China, the consequent threat to foreign investment, market contractions, and the food security issue made worse by the disruption of grain exports from Ukraine, further threaten sharp drops in economic growth. Xi faces the universally intractable challenge of raising birth rates amidst the shrinkage of the labour pool, without being able to ideologically justify imposing restrictions on abortion services and other cornerstone provisions of communist-led socio-economic development.

This draconian approach is also evident in Xi’s mistreatment of the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, despite his father cautioning prudence and supported autonomous governance, and the unconcealed crackdown against liberal protestors in Hong Kong. While Xi’s predecessors dealt ruthlessly with the demonstrations leading-up to the 1989 June 4 Incident, Falun-Gong, and the 1995 elections in Taiwan, these policies were accompanied by far greater caution in foreign policy. In contrast, Xi has stoked diplomatic hostility with Australia, and Canada. Beijing is demonstrating that it will be able to manage the significant economic costs to China and the world of a war over Taiwan.

The CCP is a paramilitary organization that was born in the chaos of war, with the PLA the constitutional protector of the party, not China. 槍桿子裡出政權 (Qiang Gan Zi Li Chu Zheng Quan) means that political authority is acquired through gun barrels: implying that power is fundamentally coercive, and succession is conducted by usurpation. Despite the CCP sharing some similarities with the Soviet and Russian system, both being legacy communist bodies, politics in Beijing is far more factionalized, a characteristic since before Deng Xiaoping (in power 1982-1997). Jiang Zemin prolonged his control of the PLA during Hu Jintao’s administration (2002-2012). to protect the interests of his crony generals.

Xi started to supplant Jiang’s influence in the Central Military Commission (CMC) as early as 2014. This began with the prosecution of pro-Jiang General Xu Caihou, who was a key conduit for promotions and appointments beginning in Hu’s era, followed by another Jiang loyalist General Guo Boxiong. Others, like Guo’s associate General Fang Fenghui, and General Zhang Yang, committed suicide. Xi replaced 16 four-star generals and removed the critics of his appointment of new loyalists. The increased saliency of China’s war propaganda mollifies the military, and satisfies the CCP’s goal of promising to resolve Mao Zedong’s unfinished civil war over Taiwan.

There is nevertheless resistance by broader minded military leaders. The leak of the May 14^th meeting of the Guangdong Joint Military-Local Command Departments 广州省军地联合指挥部, may reflect concerns with Xi’s strategy. The conference explicitly described Xi’s intention to prepare for a regional conflict, with emphasis on the South China Sea, the first island chain, general mobilization, and military logistics. Also discussed was the Chinese diaspora, ideology unification, the destruction of foreign powers, never to allow Taiwanese independence, and the defense of national sovereignty.

One now-disappeared Xi skeptic, is PLA Air Force General Liu Yazhou, who was arrested and accused in 2022 of having been corrupted by the US officials, with the intent of causing a Soviet Union-like collapse of China. His brother is adjunct political science professor Liu Yawei at Emory University, and he is author of an important book on strategic studies, 赢在制空权, which discusses the integration of technology in air force operations. According to the former Director of the Center on Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute, Michael Pillsbury, Yazhou would understand that the benefits of Chinese-US cooperation cannot be offset, by what he calls the “monumental mistake” of a war over Taiwan.

There is the egregiously cynical conclusion that Xi may risk a war over Taiwan knowing that any less-than victorious outcome will increase his influence within the PLA and permit him to further reduce opposing factions and disloyal officers. The responsibility for any military setback, as long as it is not catastrophic, can be shifted onto the PLA, which will perversely strengthen the stature of the CCP and increase the PLA’s dependence on the party. This is similar to Mao’s use of the Korean War (1950-53) to eliminate former Kuomintang officers and soldiers, who were re-organized into 14 PLA Armies, the majority of which were deployed to the front, suffering exceptional losses in a protracted conflict.

Taiwan’s current deterrent posture assumes that China will not initiate a conflict it does not believe it can win quickly enough to secure a fait accompli, and avoid economic and domestic Chinese costs from a Western naval blockade. However, Taipei has not accounted for Xi’s prioritization of control over the CCP rather than sensitivity to domestic economic costs, as is evident in a slew of recent policy initiatives coming out of the Politburo Standing Committee. Nor does the US appreciate that factional benefits will accrue to Xi if the PLA is less that successful in its operations.

Dr. Julian Spencer-Churchill is an associate professor of international relations at Concordia University (Montreal) along with Liu Zongzo.