What if all horror scenarios suddenly become reality – and China actively tries to conquer Taiwan? A new analysis by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) explains that the European Union could use targeted sanctions to deter China from attacking Taiwan: Europe’s greatest leverage in this regard would be access to the European market. Michael Radunski summarizes the study for you. However, some questions remain unanswered.
On Wednesday morning, China caused a stir with an unexpected missile test: An intercontinental ballistic missile landed in the Pacific Ocean – the first such test in 44 years. According to experts, the test is more than routine, writes Fabian Kretschmer. It is a targeted demonstration of power, especially in the direction of the USA. Is China planning to use its nuclear weapons as a means of exerting political pressure or even to actually launch a strike in the near future?
On Wednesday morning at 08:44 local time, the Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile, equipped with a dummy explosive, flew in a high arc into the Pacific. The weapons test came as a huge surprise to the world public. Spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang from the Ministry of Defense, however, spoke of pure “routine”: the test was “in accordance with international law and was not directed against a specific country or target”.
But there can be no question of routine. After all, China’s last launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile over the Pacific was a good 44 years ago. So what does the People’s Liberation Army want to achieve with this military show of force? According to experts, perhaps the most important message is that the notoriously opaque China has made the missile test public at all. It obviously wants to project strength to the outside world.
And even if the saber-rattling is not directed against a specific country according to the Ministry of Defense, this is likely to be interpreted differently in the region. “They signal that China is capable of striking US territory with nuclear weapons”, the Financial Times quotes Taiwanese professor Lin Ying-yu as saying. This missile test would strengthen Beijing’s negotiating position before Xi Jinping holds what is likely to be his last telephone conversation with US President Joe Biden before the end of his term in office in the coming weeks.
However, China’s immediate neighbors are at least as skeptical about its rapid military build-up. Japan, India, Bhutan, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines all have unresolved territorial disputes with the People’s Republic. Other conflicts, including those with Russia and North Korea, have been settled for the time being, but could break out again at any time.
The People’s Liberation Army is currently particularly active. In recent months, it has conducted regular military exercises at sea and in the air, including joint exercises with the armies of Russia and Iran. On Wednesday, the Chinese navy also launched all three Chinese aircraft carriers simultaneously for the first time. According to the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense, “intensive missile test exercises and other activities” by the People’s Liberation Army have been observed.
The fact is that China has been increasing its military budget by at least six percent every year for over three decades. Critics argue that at a total of $232 billion, this is still only a fraction of the US budget. However, this comparison falls short – if only because the absolute figures are not comparable due to the difference in purchasing power between the two countries.
In China, there are a number of hidden military costs that do not appear in the official figures for reasons of national security. In addition, Xi Jinping has pushed a strategy of so-called “military-civilian fusion”, which includes, among other things, the military being able to access all university research results and technological achievements of state-owned companies largely without restrictions. The People’s Liberation Army is therefore many times more powerful than it may appear on paper.
However, what should worry the international community the most is China’s nuclear armament. In the last three years, US researchers have discovered several new nuclear silos in the north-western desert regions of the People’s Republic on the basis of satellite images. Washington currently estimates that China already possesses around 500 nuclear weapons. If this trend continues, the country is likely to catch up with Russia and the USA – the two states with the most nuclear weapons in their stockpiles worldwide – within the next decade.
Above all, however, the question arises as to why Xi Jinping is continuing his nuclear arms build-up at all. After all, the country has long had more than enough warheads for the original strategy of so-called second-strike capability. The equation is simple: China only needed enough nuclear weapons to survive an American first strike and then launch a counter-attack. The fact that Beijing is now increasing its arsenal therefore makes no sense in terms of the original strategy. Unless, of course, China’s leadership has changed its strategy – and is now possibly using its nuclear power as a means of exerting pressure to achieve political goals rather than as a pure deterrent.
Wednesday’s weapons test is also intended to demonstrate the functionality of the Chinese missile forces. These forces have been affected by an unprecedented wave of purges in recent years, which, according to official information, is said to have been about corruption. Several high-ranking military officers were removed by the party leadership. The signal to the outside world at the time was devastating: The fact that even high-ranking generals were corrupt did not reflect well on discipline within the People’s Liberation Army – and ultimately on Xi Jinping’s personnel management. Fabian Kretschmer
How can China be deterred from attacking Taiwan? This question is on the minds of analysts around the world. Agathe Demarais, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), believes she has found the answer. In a recent analysis, the researcher concludes that EU sanctions could deter China from a possible attack. However, the measures would have to meet certain criteria to be effective.
Agathe Demarais is convinced: “Europe probably has more influence than it thinks: China cannot afford to lose access to the US and EU markets at the same time.” And so the title of the analysis is apt: “Hard, Fast, and Where it Hurts.”
The most important points of the analysis:
“Market access is Europe’s greatest lever“, writes Demarais. And here the scientist hits the bull’s eye. China’s economic growth is increasingly dependent on exports. For years, China’s boom was fueled by national factors – from catch-up effects to huge infrastructure projects and a soaring real estate market. However, this model has reached its limits and the export of industrial goods is becoming increasingly important. This is demonstrated by the huge over-capacities that are now pushing onto the European and American markets.
Every year, Chinese companies produce as many products as their competitors in the USA and the EU combined. Almost 20 percent of Chinese GDP is exported – and almost 40 percent of this goes to the G7 EU countries. China’s trade surpluses with the G7 countries will total $612 billion in 2023. According to Demarais, this means the reverse: Almost 100 million Chinese jobs depend on foreign demand. In short, China cannot afford to lose access to all G7 and EU markets at the same time.
Demarais is also aware of the mutual dependency. Many European companies are dependent on supplies from China – from raw materials and primary products to finished parts. The solution is that the EU should prioritize two sectors: electronic/electrical devices and low-end products such as shoes, clothing and toys. Sanctions could take the form of import bans or prohibitively high tariffs.
Demarais is convinced that strict G7-EU import bans on non-critical consumer goods could deal a severe blow to the Chinese economy. At the same time, the measures would only have a moderate impact on the G7 and European economies.
To be effective, however, the EU would have to take all possible measures directly, according to Demarais. This is because large economies such as Russia and China in particular can adapt well to “mild” sanctions and thus “immunize” themselves against later and harsher sanctions.
This means that EU politicians should act hard and fast. “Otherwise, China would likely suffer only temporary economic damage, which it could shrug off while building up immunity to tougher measures”, writes Demarais.
At the same time, the EU should avoid complying with US demands for financial sanctions. China has already taken comprehensive measures in these areas to protect itself from Western financial sanctions: gradual de-dollarization, alternatives to SWIFT and the introduction of digital currencies.
According to Demarais, these steps are not aimed at completely replacing SWIFT or the US dollar. Rather, they offer China a way out should the People’s Republic be cut off from Western financial channels or currencies. Accordingly, such steps will only have a limited effect.
The analysis presented by Agathe Demarais is fascinating. And yet there are some aspects that could become problematic in the harsh reality.
We can only hope that there will be no war over Taiwan – and that these questions can then remain unanswered.
“My friends in the UK, locked out of London, call themselves ‘Generation Rent’. My friends in Beijing are ‘Generation Involution’, part of a system that absorbs more and more effort and yields less and less.” When Yuan Yang writes about her experiences in China, she often writes about her own generation, called Jiǔlínghòu (“九零后 – those born from 1990 onwards”).
But while her peers in China were making their way amid ever-increasing competition for university and jobs and shrinking freedom, Yuan Yang grew up near London as part of the “Generation Rent”. Her parents had both been university lecturers in China and had emigrated to England as a young couple on their own initiative sometime earlier. Yuan Yang spent the first years of her life with her grandparents in a small town in the mountains of Sichuan province, deep in the Chinese interior. Then her parents took her to live with them.
The immigrant family built a new life for themselves in Reading, just 70 kilometers west of the British capital. After leaving school, Yuan Yang leaped to Oxford University, where she studied economics at the London School of Economics. After graduating, at the age of 26, she went to Beijing as China correspondent for the Financial Times. It was a reunion with the country of her origins, which she had only known from summer vacations from the age of five.
In Beijing, she mainly wrote about economic issues, but at the same time she was moved by the fate of her own generation. During her six years in China, she documented the lives of young women in particular. She tells some of these stories in her book “Private Revolutions”, which was published this March. The four women portrayed in the book have fought and continue to fight against traditional role models in different ways; most of them have moved from the countryside to the big cities. One of them, Sam, an activist for workers’ rights, disappeared in 2018 during a wave of government repression.
When her book was published, Yuan Yang was already back in the UK – and busy campaigning. She stood for the Labour Party in the general election in July in the newly created constituency of Earley and Woodley near Reading. She beat the Conservative candidate in a clear victory for the Labor Party. She is now the first Chinese-born member of parliament in the UK – and one of the only ones in the whole of Europe. There are no members of the Bundestag with a Chinese migration history.
According to her own account, Yuan Yang was politicized by the financial crisis. During her studies, she founded the organization Rethinking Economics, advocating greater plurality in the rather dogmatic field of economics. Even before her time in China, she joined the Labour Party.
As a Member of Parliament, she promises to keep the center of her life in her constituency, holds public consultations and spends much of her energy fighting for a new hospital building. She declined an interview request: too many questions about British trade and foreign policy towards China, which is not the focus of her work.
But her life story shapes her work in other ways. One of the issues close to her heart is working with migrant communities and against racism. She also campaigns for the interests of migrants from Hong Kong who came to the UK after the 2019 protests were crushed.
She talks about democracy in the UK not as something to be taken for granted, but as an achievement that needs to be defended and renewed. “I would be lucky to have just a little of the courage of the people I interviewed as a journalist”, she remarked during her first speech in the British Parliament, punctuated with subtle hints of British humor. And about her new home Earley and Woodley, Yuan Yang said: “We are proud of our diversity, our diversity makes us stronger.” One would like to hear such sentences from members of the Bundestag with a Chinese migration history in the future. Leonardo Pape
Climbing is the trend sport of the season in China. Its popularity is also linked to the success of Chinese athlete Wu Peng, who won a silver medal in speed climbing at the Olympic Games in Paris. Beginners and advanced climbers are now showing themselves in dramatic climbing poses on social media, often in skintight outfits. Some sports students have already recognized the gap in the market and offer their services as hiking and climbing partners who can carry you the last few meters to the top in an emergency.
What if all horror scenarios suddenly become reality – and China actively tries to conquer Taiwan? A new analysis by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) explains that the European Union could use targeted sanctions to deter China from attacking Taiwan: Europe’s greatest leverage in this regard would be access to the European market. Michael Radunski summarizes the study for you. However, some questions remain unanswered.
On Wednesday morning, China caused a stir with an unexpected missile test: An intercontinental ballistic missile landed in the Pacific Ocean – the first such test in 44 years. According to experts, the test is more than routine, writes Fabian Kretschmer. It is a targeted demonstration of power, especially in the direction of the USA. Is China planning to use its nuclear weapons as a means of exerting political pressure or even to actually launch a strike in the near future?
On Wednesday morning at 08:44 local time, the Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile, equipped with a dummy explosive, flew in a high arc into the Pacific. The weapons test came as a huge surprise to the world public. Spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang from the Ministry of Defense, however, spoke of pure “routine”: the test was “in accordance with international law and was not directed against a specific country or target”.
But there can be no question of routine. After all, China’s last launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile over the Pacific was a good 44 years ago. So what does the People’s Liberation Army want to achieve with this military show of force? According to experts, perhaps the most important message is that the notoriously opaque China has made the missile test public at all. It obviously wants to project strength to the outside world.
And even if the saber-rattling is not directed against a specific country according to the Ministry of Defense, this is likely to be interpreted differently in the region. “They signal that China is capable of striking US territory with nuclear weapons”, the Financial Times quotes Taiwanese professor Lin Ying-yu as saying. This missile test would strengthen Beijing’s negotiating position before Xi Jinping holds what is likely to be his last telephone conversation with US President Joe Biden before the end of his term in office in the coming weeks.
However, China’s immediate neighbors are at least as skeptical about its rapid military build-up. Japan, India, Bhutan, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines all have unresolved territorial disputes with the People’s Republic. Other conflicts, including those with Russia and North Korea, have been settled for the time being, but could break out again at any time.
The People’s Liberation Army is currently particularly active. In recent months, it has conducted regular military exercises at sea and in the air, including joint exercises with the armies of Russia and Iran. On Wednesday, the Chinese navy also launched all three Chinese aircraft carriers simultaneously for the first time. According to the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense, “intensive missile test exercises and other activities” by the People’s Liberation Army have been observed.
The fact is that China has been increasing its military budget by at least six percent every year for over three decades. Critics argue that at a total of $232 billion, this is still only a fraction of the US budget. However, this comparison falls short – if only because the absolute figures are not comparable due to the difference in purchasing power between the two countries.
In China, there are a number of hidden military costs that do not appear in the official figures for reasons of national security. In addition, Xi Jinping has pushed a strategy of so-called “military-civilian fusion”, which includes, among other things, the military being able to access all university research results and technological achievements of state-owned companies largely without restrictions. The People’s Liberation Army is therefore many times more powerful than it may appear on paper.
However, what should worry the international community the most is China’s nuclear armament. In the last three years, US researchers have discovered several new nuclear silos in the north-western desert regions of the People’s Republic on the basis of satellite images. Washington currently estimates that China already possesses around 500 nuclear weapons. If this trend continues, the country is likely to catch up with Russia and the USA – the two states with the most nuclear weapons in their stockpiles worldwide – within the next decade.
Above all, however, the question arises as to why Xi Jinping is continuing his nuclear arms build-up at all. After all, the country has long had more than enough warheads for the original strategy of so-called second-strike capability. The equation is simple: China only needed enough nuclear weapons to survive an American first strike and then launch a counter-attack. The fact that Beijing is now increasing its arsenal therefore makes no sense in terms of the original strategy. Unless, of course, China’s leadership has changed its strategy – and is now possibly using its nuclear power as a means of exerting pressure to achieve political goals rather than as a pure deterrent.
Wednesday’s weapons test is also intended to demonstrate the functionality of the Chinese missile forces. These forces have been affected by an unprecedented wave of purges in recent years, which, according to official information, is said to have been about corruption. Several high-ranking military officers were removed by the party leadership. The signal to the outside world at the time was devastating: The fact that even high-ranking generals were corrupt did not reflect well on discipline within the People’s Liberation Army – and ultimately on Xi Jinping’s personnel management. Fabian Kretschmer
How can China be deterred from attacking Taiwan? This question is on the minds of analysts around the world. Agathe Demarais, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), believes she has found the answer. In a recent analysis, the researcher concludes that EU sanctions could deter China from a possible attack. However, the measures would have to meet certain criteria to be effective.
Agathe Demarais is convinced: “Europe probably has more influence than it thinks: China cannot afford to lose access to the US and EU markets at the same time.” And so the title of the analysis is apt: “Hard, Fast, and Where it Hurts.”
The most important points of the analysis:
“Market access is Europe’s greatest lever“, writes Demarais. And here the scientist hits the bull’s eye. China’s economic growth is increasingly dependent on exports. For years, China’s boom was fueled by national factors – from catch-up effects to huge infrastructure projects and a soaring real estate market. However, this model has reached its limits and the export of industrial goods is becoming increasingly important. This is demonstrated by the huge over-capacities that are now pushing onto the European and American markets.
Every year, Chinese companies produce as many products as their competitors in the USA and the EU combined. Almost 20 percent of Chinese GDP is exported – and almost 40 percent of this goes to the G7 EU countries. China’s trade surpluses with the G7 countries will total $612 billion in 2023. According to Demarais, this means the reverse: Almost 100 million Chinese jobs depend on foreign demand. In short, China cannot afford to lose access to all G7 and EU markets at the same time.
Demarais is also aware of the mutual dependency. Many European companies are dependent on supplies from China – from raw materials and primary products to finished parts. The solution is that the EU should prioritize two sectors: electronic/electrical devices and low-end products such as shoes, clothing and toys. Sanctions could take the form of import bans or prohibitively high tariffs.
Demarais is convinced that strict G7-EU import bans on non-critical consumer goods could deal a severe blow to the Chinese economy. At the same time, the measures would only have a moderate impact on the G7 and European economies.
To be effective, however, the EU would have to take all possible measures directly, according to Demarais. This is because large economies such as Russia and China in particular can adapt well to “mild” sanctions and thus “immunize” themselves against later and harsher sanctions.
This means that EU politicians should act hard and fast. “Otherwise, China would likely suffer only temporary economic damage, which it could shrug off while building up immunity to tougher measures”, writes Demarais.
At the same time, the EU should avoid complying with US demands for financial sanctions. China has already taken comprehensive measures in these areas to protect itself from Western financial sanctions: gradual de-dollarization, alternatives to SWIFT and the introduction of digital currencies.
According to Demarais, these steps are not aimed at completely replacing SWIFT or the US dollar. Rather, they offer China a way out should the People’s Republic be cut off from Western financial channels or currencies. Accordingly, such steps will only have a limited effect.
The analysis presented by Agathe Demarais is fascinating. And yet there are some aspects that could become problematic in the harsh reality.
We can only hope that there will be no war over Taiwan – and that these questions can then remain unanswered.
“My friends in the UK, locked out of London, call themselves ‘Generation Rent’. My friends in Beijing are ‘Generation Involution’, part of a system that absorbs more and more effort and yields less and less.” When Yuan Yang writes about her experiences in China, she often writes about her own generation, called Jiǔlínghòu (“九零后 – those born from 1990 onwards”).
But while her peers in China were making their way amid ever-increasing competition for university and jobs and shrinking freedom, Yuan Yang grew up near London as part of the “Generation Rent”. Her parents had both been university lecturers in China and had emigrated to England as a young couple on their own initiative sometime earlier. Yuan Yang spent the first years of her life with her grandparents in a small town in the mountains of Sichuan province, deep in the Chinese interior. Then her parents took her to live with them.
The immigrant family built a new life for themselves in Reading, just 70 kilometers west of the British capital. After leaving school, Yuan Yang leaped to Oxford University, where she studied economics at the London School of Economics. After graduating, at the age of 26, she went to Beijing as China correspondent for the Financial Times. It was a reunion with the country of her origins, which she had only known from summer vacations from the age of five.
In Beijing, she mainly wrote about economic issues, but at the same time she was moved by the fate of her own generation. During her six years in China, she documented the lives of young women in particular. She tells some of these stories in her book “Private Revolutions”, which was published this March. The four women portrayed in the book have fought and continue to fight against traditional role models in different ways; most of them have moved from the countryside to the big cities. One of them, Sam, an activist for workers’ rights, disappeared in 2018 during a wave of government repression.
When her book was published, Yuan Yang was already back in the UK – and busy campaigning. She stood for the Labour Party in the general election in July in the newly created constituency of Earley and Woodley near Reading. She beat the Conservative candidate in a clear victory for the Labor Party. She is now the first Chinese-born member of parliament in the UK – and one of the only ones in the whole of Europe. There are no members of the Bundestag with a Chinese migration history.
According to her own account, Yuan Yang was politicized by the financial crisis. During her studies, she founded the organization Rethinking Economics, advocating greater plurality in the rather dogmatic field of economics. Even before her time in China, she joined the Labour Party.
As a Member of Parliament, she promises to keep the center of her life in her constituency, holds public consultations and spends much of her energy fighting for a new hospital building. She declined an interview request: too many questions about British trade and foreign policy towards China, which is not the focus of her work.
But her life story shapes her work in other ways. One of the issues close to her heart is working with migrant communities and against racism. She also campaigns for the interests of migrants from Hong Kong who came to the UK after the 2019 protests were crushed.
She talks about democracy in the UK not as something to be taken for granted, but as an achievement that needs to be defended and renewed. “I would be lucky to have just a little of the courage of the people I interviewed as a journalist”, she remarked during her first speech in the British Parliament, punctuated with subtle hints of British humor. And about her new home Earley and Woodley, Yuan Yang said: “We are proud of our diversity, our diversity makes us stronger.” One would like to hear such sentences from members of the Bundestag with a Chinese migration history in the future. Leonardo Pape
Climbing is the trend sport of the season in China. Its popularity is also linked to the success of Chinese athlete Wu Peng, who won a silver medal in speed climbing at the Olympic Games in Paris. Beginners and advanced climbers are now showing themselves in dramatic climbing poses on social media, often in skintight outfits. Some sports students have already recognized the gap in the market and offer their services as hiking and climbing partners who can carry you the last few meters to the top in an emergency.
