One-China: Listen to Beijing

 “The 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation clearly stipulated that Taiwan, stolen by Japan, must be restored to China”.

Ambassador Zheng Zeguang, October 26^th, 2025

Why Now?

October 29^th. China is preparing to invade Taiwan.  Probably not tomorrow, but maybe the day after…. Hear me out. In December 2021 I wrote a piece predicting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  I had not only read what Putin was saying, but also what their armed forces were doing. Part of my reasoning at the time was that Putin would never have a better opportunity.  China today?  Beijing is not only telling the West it intends to reunify the Republic of China with the People’s Republic of China there are several very good reasons the West must listen.  President Xi Jinping will also never have a better opportunity.  The West is in strategic, political and economic disarray; an internal power struggle is also underway at the very top of the Chinese Communist Party.

First, China is softening up the West for decisive Chinese action against Taiwan. Last week, Zheng Zeguang, the Chinese Ambassador to the Court of St James, published a piece in a British newspaper explaining why Taiwan has always been a part of China and always will.  The message is clear: if Britain and the wider West want to shape the twenty-first century world order it can only do so with China and not against it.  And only if the collective West re-confirms its collective adherence to the “One-China” principle. Zeguang was clear: “This is the key to ensuring the sound and steady development of China-UK relations”. 

Second, Zeguang suggests that Taipei is claiming the sovereign right to participate in the UN and other international organisations on the grounds that UNGA 2758 does not address Taiwan’s legal status or preclude such participation.  He also suggests that if successful such status would be a casus belli.  Beijing is particularly concerned about “the threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait…from separatist activities for “Taiwan independence” and the connivance and support by external forces”. The specific source of Beijing’s concern is what Zeguang describes as recent efforts by Taipei’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) “[again] in collusion with certain external forces…to distort UNGA (United Nations General Assembly) Resolution 2758”, which establishes the One-China Principle.

Third, China assumes that however important Taiwan is to world semiconductor production, the US will not go to war with China if Beijing invades.  Donald Trump does not wage war over other peoples’ issues and in principle accepts Taiwan as a ‘renegade’ province of China.  By writing the article in a British newspaper Beijing was also sending a message to the Americans. Britain does not matter beyond being a fading metaphor for Western/US power. Zeguang pointedly quoted the joint 1972 British-China communique which stated that, “The Government of the United Kingdom recognise the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China”, and that “Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China”.

Fourth, XI is essentially a Han Chinese nationalist and he is resorting ever more to such nationalism to shore up his domestic position. There is a power struggle underway between various factions at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.  For the first time since he came to power in 2012 President-for-Life Xi is facing questions not only over the course of his domestic but also foreign policy.  As he ages questions of the succession are also becoming ever more acute.  At the very heart of Xi’s nationalism is not only the recovery of Taiwan, forced if necessary, but the eclipse of the United States as the world’s dominant military power. Even if Taiwan is recovered well before the centenary of the founding of the CPC in 2049 Xi’s China will continue to challenge the US.

Fifth, Beijing believes China’s military might just be able to pull off a military invasion if but only if it can subvert Taiwan from within first through an applied information and cyber coercion, corruption of Taipei’s elites, blockade and sabotage of critical infrastructures to ease the way for its armed forces across the Taiwan Straits. 

A Warning from History

Would an invasion succeed? Take the D-Day maritime amphibious invasion of France in June 1944. Portsmouth to the Normandy beaches is 180km or 110 miles, whilst the distance between mainland China and Taiwan across the Strait of Taiwan is the same. Prior to D-Day Anglo-American forces had undertaken five major maritime-amphibious invasions and most of those only narrowly avoided disaster.

That D-Day was a success was in no small part because the conditions that were absent for the Nazi’s planned Operation Sealion in 1940 were in place for Operation Overlord: excellent intelligence, the support of the local population and undisputed Allied control of both air and sea.  The ‘only’ contest Allied forces faced was getting ashore and establishing quickly an unassailable bridgehead. No doubt the Chinese have studied the extremely extensive and intensive Chiefs of Staff Supreme Allied Command (COSSAC) plans that led to D-Day in their own planning, which they have clearly now completed.  Recent military exercises testing Chinese Naval Infantry suggest that any such attack would still be an enormous risk for the Chinese. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) simply lacks the experience of contested blue water power projection and/or massive joint maritime-amphibious operations.

One-China?

Here’s the twist - Chinese planning suggests the threat of invasion is more Operation Sealion than Overlord, an attempt to force a settlement through the threat of invasion as one of several instruments of power. Western planners assume such an invasion would be contested. What if it was not? In other words, Beijing needs to successfully subvert Taipei politically and paralyse Taiwan critically BEFORE it attacks militarily.  In such circumstances, Taiwan’s reunification with mainland China would be processional and ceremonial, a warning to others.  Zeguang’s article is one such instrument of power.

The West?  Washington is all that matters to Beijing.  If the US did defend Taiwan there would be a major war over an issue that the US has accepted has already been decided. Taiwan is Chinese real estate.  It would be very hard to sell such a war to the American people and for Trump Taiwan is a faraway land about which he knows little. The Atlantic Alliance would also certainly split (again) thus helping China’s useful idiots in Moscow.  Despite the large number of Japanese citizens in Taiwan it is very unlikely Japan would act without the Americans. If Europeans are pretty much irrelevant in Europe, they certainly are in East Asia. They would issue a few concerned declarations and then adopt their usual grand strategic posture of burying their heads in the drifting sands of False Virtue.

What is clear is that a reckoning over Taiwan is coming and it is coming soon and those responsible for statecraft in Western capitals clearly think the best course of action would be to expedite a peaceful resolution to the conflict on China’s terms.  Sudetenland 2025?

One-China: listen to Beijing...very carefully.

Julian Lindley-French