China’s calibrated exercises around Taiwan seek to find new equilibrium

The calm didn’t last long. Just five days later, on Monday, China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, launched a new set of drills in response to the arrival in Taiwan of a U.S. congressional delegation led by Sen. Ed Markey (D, Mass.).

But the new maneuvers lacked the firepower of the response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan earlier this month, when an enraged Beijing encircled Taiwan’s main island with ballistic missiles, simulated land-strike attacks and reaffirmed its willingness to use force to bring Taiwan under its control.

The PLA sent 30 warplanes and five warships near Taiwan’s waters on Monday, as Mr. Markey’s delegation was leaving Taipei, Taiwan’s military said. That was less than half the number of planes and ships the PLA sent into the same area on Aug. 7, the final day of the four-day-long exercises that Beijing launched in response to Mrs. Pelosi’s visit.

The more restrained response to Mr. Markey’s delegation suggests that Mrs. Pelosi’s visit was the exception to the rule, given her seniority in the U.S. government and her defiance of repeated Chinese warnings against proceeding with the visit.

In contrast, Mr. Markey’s trip wasn’t publicly known in advance, while his lower status—unlike Mrs. Pelosi, he isn’t in the presidential line of succession—seems to have earned him a far more subdued military response alongside the usual words of condemnation. Over the past two years, 33 U.S. members of Congress have traveled to Taiwan, according to Taipei, and none generated the response that Mrs. Pelosi’s visit drew.

The differing reactions to this months’ two visits come as Beijing seeks to calibrate its displays of force in line with the perceived severity of offenses, while aiming to avoid outright military conflict, according to people familiar with Chinese thinking.

In the absence of U.S. actions that China would regard as further eroding the status quo, some defense and political experts say Beijing could seek opportunities to lower the temperature around Taiwan in the next few months, even as it seeks to establish a “new normal," which the PLA has said will include more frequent drills staged ever closer to the island.

“Having really visually and publicly affirmed its red line, it’s possible when the atmosphere is right for Beijing to switch gears to a softer approach," said Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at Australian National University who studies ties between Washington, Beijing and Taipei. “Beijing knows that a coercive reunification scenario is unduly costly and unduly destabilizing toward China’s own security."

Those who argue that Beijing isn’t seeking to actually push the standoff toward the brink of armed conflict point to how the PLA decided to carry out its maneuvers: It has shot missiles over Taiwan—but so high in the atmosphere that it didn’t constitute a real threat. Its planes have repeatedly crossed the halfway mark of the Taiwan Strait—but only for short bursts of time, dipping in and immediately back out, most often at the northeast and southwest ends rather than around the center of the island, according to maps released by Taiwan’s defense ministry.

During the Markey-led visit, Taiwan military spokesman Maj. Gen. Sun Li-fang said Taiwan didn’t raise its combat readiness level, in the absence of any signs of a broader PLA mobilization.

On Monday, the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command released video footage claiming to show its pilot flying over Penghu, a Taipei-controlled island chain in the Taiwan Strait. Asked about the clip on Tuesday, Tung Pei-lun, Taiwan Air Force’s vice chief of staff for operations, dismissed the video as psychological warfare, saying the Chinese military exaggerated how close it got to Taiwan-controlled territory.

Separately, Beijing said Tuesday that it would impose sanctions against seven Taiwanese government officials and lawmakers, including Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan’s de facto ambassador in Washington, and Wellington Koo, secretary-general of Taiwan’s National Security Council.

“It is conspicuous that the PLA has restrained itself from escalating matters against the U.S.," said James Char, a PLA expert at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, adding that China would likely want to avoid provoking a U.S. military response.

Alessio Patalano, a Professor of War and Strategy in East Asia at King’s College London, said the post-Pelosi visit exercises were “more about a calibrated political signaling rather than an operational necessity."

Still, “the two are never entirely disentangled," Mr. Patalano said, adding that such maneuvers could wear down the Taiwanese military, which must activate its defenses every time such a breach happens.

Analysts say the most durable shift could be in the way Beijing used Mrs. Pelosi’s visit to establish a new status quo around Taiwan and expand its political options. While the PLA has engaged in military exercises around Taiwan every summer, the House speaker’s visit allowed Beijing to launch more ambitious drills—something it has desired, experts say—and frame it as a matter of self-defense.

It has also used the visit to unequivocally assert its view that the median line, a notional boundary that bisects the Taiwan Strait, is invalid—a position it has long held but rarely acted upon as plainly as in the past two weeks.

In the wake of Mrs. Pelosi’s visit, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last week issued its first Taiwan policy paper in 22 years, re-emphasizing its desire for peaceful reunification while also underscoring the possibility of military action. Notably, it removed a clause from earlier versions of the document that ruled out dispatching Chinese troops and civilian administrators to Taiwan should the island agree to submit to Beijing.

China will likely continue using military exercises to deter the U.S. and pro-independence Taiwanese leaders, or even to compel direct talks with the government in Taipei as the PLA’s capabilities grow stronger, said M. Taylor Fravel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has written extensively about China’s military strategy.

The patrolling and regular exercises normalize the PLA’s sustained maneuvers in the area, analysts said, allowing it to scale up its activity when it wants to signal displeasure without the political costs of starting a new round of exercises, which would be seen as a more serious escalation.

China, Mr. Fravel said, can now “choose how much military force to maintain around Taiwan moving forward."

Addressing reporters last week in Washington, Mrs. Pelosi denounced China’s military actions. They are “trying to establish sort of a new normal," she said. “And we just can’t let that happen."

Mr. Char, the Singapore-based PLA expert, said the next Taiwan Strait crisis could also surpass the current one “if Beijing’s military encroachments closer to Taiwan’s territorial waters and airspace does indeed become the new norm."

But in the near term, he added, Beijing’s priority will now be to maintain stability ahead of a key Communist Party conclave, where leader Xi Jinping will seek to break with recent precedent and secure a third term in power.

Beijing will likely also adjust its actions depending on the results of midterm elections in the U.S. and Taiwan, both of which come in November, Australian National University’s Mr. Sung said.

Mrs. Pelosi could step down from her role if, as expected, the Democratic Party loses the House. In Taiwan, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which favors policies that chart a more independent course from mainland China, could also lose several mayoral elections.

Each of those factors would provide Beijing with more room to justify “a reset" and ease off on its toughened stance toward the U.S. as well as return to emphasizing friendly ties with Taiwan, Mr. Sung said—even more so if other countries in the region show sympathy with Beijing’s position on Taiwan.

“That’s how China does it: they got a softer hand, they got a tougher hand," he said, “At this point, they’re showing the tougher hand. Then when the time is right, it’s more politically OK for them to try the softer hand as well."