A Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the coming months remains a real threat and U.S. forces in the Pacific are preparing for a conflict should an attack take place, according to the commander of Army forces in the Pacific.
Army Gen. Ronald P. Clark said in public remarks Tuesday that the danger of a People’s Liberation Army large-scale attack was first disclosed to Congress in 2021 testimony from then-commander of all forces in the Pacific, Adm. Philip Davidson, who revealed China was building up military forces for a cross-Taiwan Strait assault by April of 2027.
The resulting six-year time frame became known as the “Davidson window,” said Gen. Clark, who was chief of staff to Adm. Davidson and helped prepare his March 2021 Senate testimony revealing the threat.
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“So the question is, is the window still valid? The answer for us at [U.S. Army Pacific] is yes,” Gen. Clark said after a speech to TechNet Indo-Pacific, a defense conference in Hawaii.
Chinese sources for the invasion danger were revealed by Chinese President Xi Jinping who ordered all Chinese military units to be ready for an attempted military annexation of democratic by 2027 as the military’s most pressing priority.
Gen. Clark disclosed for the first time that a potential 2027 invasion date includes a specific day — April 2, 2027.
“There are 157 days between today and the 2nd of April. So that mark on the wall for us and our headquarters is to ensure that we are in position postured forward to deter war in a window in which our adversary may find it to their advantage to attack Taiwan,” he said.
Army forces, he said, are preparing for an attack and attempting to deter any invasion by prepositioning forces and supplies near China in areas he described as the first island chain and second island chain — two strings of islands in the western Pacific off the Chinese coast.
Gen. Clark said April 2 is not a date that the U.S. believes a conflict will begin.
“It is a period of time for which we’re snapping the chalk line to say we need to be ready by this date,” he said, adding that military forces are continuing to prepare, modernize and posture for deterring war beyond 2027.
Adm. Sam Paparo, commander of the Pacific Command, disclosed in a report to Congress seeking tens of billions of dollars in new weapons that the danger of a conflict with China remains real and more is needed to deter it.
“The security environment in the Indo-Pacific is becoming more dangerous and defined by an increasing risk of confrontation and crisis,” Adm. Paparo stated in the 221-page report outlining needed weapons, new communications and spy systems, training programs and military infrastructure for the region.
Gen. Clark’s warning of a potential invasion by April contrasts sharply with the annual threat assessment from the Trump administration’s director of national intelligence, which sought to play down the cross-strait dangers.
The latest assessment made public in March said intelligence analysts had concluded that Chinese leaders were not planning a Taiwan invasion in 2027 and had not set a fixed timeline for Beijing’s plans to for the island democracy, which Communist China has long claimed.
The U.S. intelligence community’s view, according to the assessment, was that Beijing would continue to seek reunification “short of conflict.” That assessment conflicted somewhat with a Pentagon report on the Chinese military made public three months earlier.
“The PLA continues to make steady progress toward its 2027 goals, whereby the PLA must be able to achieve ’strategic decisive victory’ over Taiwan, ’strategic counterbalance’ against the United States in the nuclear and other strategic domains, and ’strategic deterrence and control’ against other regional countries,” reads the annual report released by the Pentagon in December.
“In other words, China expects to be able to fight and win a war on Taiwan by the end of 2027.”
To achieve that goal, PLA forces are refining military options for reunification “by brute force,” the Pentagon said.
The PLA’s options include an amphibious invasion, firepower strike, and possibly a maritime blockade — all scenarios practiced recently by the PLA in drills that included simulated strikes on sea and land targets, dress runs for attacks against U.S. military forces in the Pacific and blockade exercises aimed at shutting down ports.
Earlier this month, U.S. intelligence officials disclosed that China is more likely to consider force against Taiwan in 2028 and later, an assessment based on readiness shortfalls in the PLA and Mr. Xi’s recent purges of high-ranking PLA leaders.
Intelligence agencies believe China is more likely to use military force against the island if current President Lai Ching-te, with the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, wins reelection in 2028, Reuters reported.
President Trump has said he was assured by Mr. Xi that China would not attempt an invasion of Taiwan while he is president. The two leaders discussed Taiwan during the recent summit meeting in Washington.
In testimony before Congress five years ago, Adm. Davidson warned that the danger of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan was likely over the next six years. He noted that Beijing had accelerated the timeline for its goal of supplanting the United States and cited China’s large-scale military buildup of ships, aircraft and missiles and aggressive political actions in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet.
China regards non-communist Taiwan as an unfinished chapter in its consolidation of power over all of the country, although Taiwan has never been under Chinese control.
Chinese Nationalist forces fled the mainland to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of a civil war that brought the Chinese Communist Party to power in Beijing.
Taiwan’s current opposition Kuomintang Party initially held the view that it remained the sole legitimate governing party over all of China.
In recent years, however, the KMT has shifted its posture away from that view and now focuses more on maintaining a constitutional status quo of the Republic of China on Taiwan and managing cross-strait dialogue.
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