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SEOUL, South Korea — In an echo of U.S. warnings, Taiwan for the first time identified 2027 as the year that a potential Chinese invasion of the democratic island could be unleashed.
The warning, issued Tuesday and referenced by the island’s military on Wednesday, comes at a time when cross-Strait tensions are rising. This week, Beijing ramped up its long-standing war of nerves against Taiwan, deploying multiple military assets around the island.
The move appears to be a sign of anger toward both Trump administration moves and Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, days after he described the Chinese Communist regime as a “foreign hostile force.”
Mr. Trump and his aides are pushing Taiwan to radically raise its defense spending, while an updated State Department briefing document has dropped traditional diplomatic language about the official U.S. position on Taiwan’s independence.
China’s pre-placement of military forces and equipment as part of drills, Taiwan’s defense minister warned Wednesday, could provide a launch platform for a swift, surprise invasion.
Significantly, Taiwan’s annual summer Han Kuang live-fire exercises, which this year take place in July with an extended duration, will simulate a Chinese invasion in 2027, Taiwanese media outlets reported Wednesday. In a paper submitted by the Defense Ministry to the legislative Yuan, this year’s scenarios would be based around “possible actions of the Chinese Communist military’s invasion of Taiwan in 2027.”
According to Bloomberg, this is the first time that Taiwan has officially mentioned the year 2027 in that context, but it is a target date that has long been cited within U.S. defense and intelligence circles.
Then-CIA Director Bill Burns said in a 2023 television interview that U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that Chinese President Xi Jinping “has instructed the [People’s Liberation Army] the Chinese military leadership, to be ready by 2027 to invade Taiwan.”
Though Mr. Burns would added “that doesn’t mean that he’s decided to invade in 2027 — or any other year,” the 2027 date have become entrenched in U.S. strategic doctrine for the region.
The year has become “a fixation in Washington,” wrote specialist media Defense News last year, adding, “It has helped steer billions of dollars toward U.S. forces in the Pacific.”
A number of PLA modernization milestones are set for 2027, which also happens to be the 100th anniversary of the PLA’s founding.
“There is no doubt or question that [Mr. Xi] has set a goal for the PLA to be a modern military capable of fighting and winning wars by 2027 — and that includes the capability of invading Taiwan,” Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told The Washington Times. “It does not include the intention to invade 2027, …but Xi may have a more viable military option to coerce Taiwan in the next two years.”
Mr. Thompson, previously director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia issues in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2011 to 2018, suggested that Taiwan should “continue to bolster its defense and train more assertively in light of China’s increasing power projection capabilities.” But Mr. Lai, who supports a bigger defense budget for Taiwan, faces pushback from the opposition-controlled Legislative Yuan.
Fears are rising in Taiwan that China’s frequent military intimidation tactics — designed to test and wear down Taiwan’s defensive capabilities — could quickly morph into an actual attack. Defense Minister Wellington Koo told reporters Wednesday that the time it would take for China to switch from exercise to combat was “not necessarily as long as we used to think.”
Mr. Koo’s comment echoes what some in the U.S. military have been saying.
In February 2024, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. Samuel Paparo warned that China could gain the capability to invade Taiwan as its war exercises advance. China could launch “a profound military operation” under the “fig leaf” of drills, resulting in “the erosion of strategic and tactical warning,” he said.
Beijing’s ever-expanding air, sea and amphibious capabilities are frequently exercised and a former red line — the median line in the Taiwan Strait — has evaporated. Earlier this week, some 54 warplanes were operating close to Taiwan, Taipei officials said, and 42 Chinese planes crossed the median line.
These factors raise the possibility that an invasion — which it had long been assumed would be signaled in advance, enabling counters to be emplaced — could be triggered simply by shifting from drills to live operations.
A playbook exists: Russian units routinely conducted winter war drills close to Ukraine’s frontiers as an intimidation tactic. In February 2022, Russia launched an invasion into Ukraine from positions they had previously used for the drills.
But given the sophisticated monitoring and technological surveillance of modern warfare, not all agree with Mr. Koo’s assessment. Russia achieved tactical surprise with its initial invasion, but its attacks on key targets, including Kyiv, Ukraine, were quickly repulsed in the early days of the war.
“There is a big difference between an attack and invasion: Don’t confuse the two,” Mr. Thompson said. “Definitely, the PLA could use its recurring and regular demonstrations of force as cover for a surprise strike, but to mount a large-scale amphibious invasion would require mass mobilization of military as well as civilian resources that would be impossible to mask.”
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