The following essay is an excerpt from Colonel Grant Newsham’s new book, When China Attacks: A Warning to America, due out from Regnery on March 28.
The combination of political warfare, gray-zone actions, and the potential for kinetic warfare come together most clearly around Taiwan, which offers the most immediate prospect of China going on a major kinetic offensive.
Taiwan remains the key objective for the Chinese communists, and Xi Jinping‘s declaration at the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress in October 2022 that China would use all possible means (i.e., force) to seize Taiwan got loud applause from the audience. It’s presented as unfinished business from the Chinese Civil War. But even more, Taiwan is key to Chinese communist domination of Asia, the Pacific, and ultimately the United States.
Taiwan is where China is getting ready for a war of the sort the Americans will recognize.
It conducted a dress rehearsal in August 2022. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) established “live-fire exclusion zones” around Taiwan following Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi‘s visit. The Chinese fired missiles bracketing both Taiwan and southern Japanese islands and conducted a range of naval and air maneuvers towards Taiwan.
Was this an act of war?
The U.S. administration apparently doesn’t think so, and the Chinese communists are glad to let it think that. To the Chinese, however, it is war. Or at least a test run.
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