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US President Joe Biden’s first international crisis will likely be over the future of Taiwan. Beijing has been positioning for this outcome for months by steadily increasing military pressure against Taipei.

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force on Saturday dispatched what the Global Times gloatingly called a ‘bomber swarm’ of 13 combat aircraft into Taiwanese airspace just south of the island. This was much larger than previous sorties and included eight long-range H-6K bombers.

The US State Department called on China to stop ‘intimidating its neighbors’ and stated its ‘rock-solid’ commitment to Taiwan’s defence. In response, China deployed 15 combat aircraft to the same region on Sunday. ‘Sooner or later, these fighters will appear over the island of Taiwan’, said a Global Times editorial.

Since Saturday the US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and an escort strike group of ships have been exercising in the South China Sea, continuing a large-scale US presence in the area for the past six months. These manoeuvres point to a significant increase in regional tensions. Beijing is determined to establish and maintain a higher military tempo around Japan, Taiwan and the South China Sea. Xi Jinping is testing Biden’s resolve.

In my view—this is a judgement, not a demonstrated fact—Xi thinks he can exploit a window of opportunity created by Covid-19 and the change of US president to accelerate China’s ambition to take over Taiwan.

The Chinese Communist Party’s objective is to have Taiwan under its control by 2049, the centenary of the party’s takeover in Beijing. Xi won’t be around then, but in 2021 he has built a military already dominant in the Taiwan Strait and faces a temporarily weakened US focused on other priorities. Does Taiwan matter as much to Biden as cutting a paper deal with Beijing on climate? Xi intends to find out.

What’s clear is that Xi has done everything he can since the Covid outbreak, readying the PLA for a Taiwan contingency and building nationalist enthusiasm for the endeavour. Xi has nothing to lose. If, as is probable, the US stands firm with Taiwan, Xi can revert to the 2049 timetable. If Biden blinks, Xi might just commit a military blunder of globally disastrous proportions.

Thus far the Biden administration has looked prepared and like it is intending to continue Donald Trump’s overt support of Taiwan and more active military role in the South China Sea. China will keep pressing for ways to weaken US determination on the defence of Taiwan. Welcome to the new normal for Indo-Pacific security. Military activities that in past years would be front-page stories about an impending crisis now barely rate a mention.

Disappointingly, our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade did not protest Beijing’s sabre-rattling over the weekend, even though at the AUSMIN summit last July Australia and the US pledged that ‘recent events only strengthened their resolve to support Taiwan’.

DFAT is no doubt thinking through what that means. It should hurry up as the pace of events is quickening. Whatever Biden does about Taiwan, he will expect Japan and Australia to be there. There is no exit strategy from our own region.

Monday saw a significant announcement from Defence Minister Linda Reynolds of a $1 billion investment into ‘advanced guided weapons to enhance Australia’s maritime security’.

This is not new money but the first approved spend of up to $24 billion allocated in the July 2020 force structure plan for ‘Maritime Guided Weapons’.

This is an important and welcome development. It shows that Defence is hastening to add new range and hitting power to its arsenal as other countries, primarily China, do the same.

The intention is for this investment to begin producing results by ‘mid-decade’, a quick schedule given that the task is not just to buy the weapons but to integrate them onto a range of ships. The aim is to identify and develop joint-production options, most likely with the US. It has been decades since Australia has been in the strike-missile production business, but we have demonstrated the industrial capability with our Nulka active missile decoy, used by the US Navy.

In a conflict, missile stocks will rapidly deplete. If Covid-19 taught us anything, it’s that we must boost domestic production in many areas, but especially the war stocks used by the Australian Defence Force.

Just as was the case with the F-35 joint strike fighter, a joint production effort on a range of missiles gives us access to a wide range of US (and possibly European) science and technology, cements closer alliance cooperation and makes practical military sense for our forces.

Initial investments will focus on upgrades to the next generation of weapons already in service. The thinking is also to identify options for jointly developing new weapons including a sea-launched weapon able to hit land targets at ranges of up to 1,500 kilometres, perhaps a cruise missile.

Rather than go to government with individual missile proposals, Defence is bundling a series of weapons into the one program. Again, this makes sense. We should look to develop the ability to fire weapons from many different types of platforms, drawing on shared technology and support systems. Could this even extend to the navy thinking about using the new long-range anti-ship missile just bought for the air force? Absolutely it should.

A mid-decade rollout of new missile capabilities means that these weapons will be fielded on our current ships and submarines, not the exquisite beauties we’re planning to launch in the 2030s. Thankfully, the government has got the message that Defence isn’t just a subset of industry policy. The essential task at this time is to think about the military challenges Defence will face in the short term.

It’s possible that many Australians may be more comfortable thinking of their military handing out sweets to children in the relatively benign peacekeeping and stabilisation missions of the 1990s. Those images were far from the whole story and they are even further from our strategic world today.

These latest military manoeuvres around Taiwan are, in fact, the emerging front line of Australia’s defence.

With President-elect Joe Biden set to take office on 20 January, there’s little time to formulate a China policy, though it’s clear his administration’s approach to Beijing could have long-term implications for stability and peace in Asia. Unquestionably, the People’s Republic of China’s escalating aggression towards Taiwan will be the administration’s greatest strategic challenge.

Decisions made by the Biden administration will likely play a role in determining whether war between China and Taiwan becomes a reality and the lengths to which Taiwan feels it must go to defend its freedom.

Two years ago, President Xi Jinping publicly declared that China would use force to ensure Taiwan’s reunification if it refused to go peacefully. Since then, the People’s Liberation Army has expanded its harassment and testing of Taiwan’s defences through naval, air and cyber aggression.

For many Taiwanese, the recent crackdown on Hong Kong offers a window onto what may come if Taiwan reunifies with the mainland. It should come as no surprise, then, that support for reunification is at an all-time low among Taiwanese, with around 90% in opposition.

Weak security guarantees from the United States, coupled with escalating aggression from China, may soon present Biden with a Taiwan that believes its only option for survival is to take a page from the Israeli playbook and restart a covert nuclear weapons program. When Taiwan went down that path between 1967 and the late 1980s, the government in Taipei ultimately backed away from nuclear weapons because it appeared China was liberalising and heading toward democratisation.

That is certainly no longer the case. Xi is proving a better authoritarian than any of his post-Mao predecessors, and the 2018 decision of the National People’s Congress to remove term limits enables him to remain president and party chair indefinitely.

According to China expert Michael Pillsbury, author of The hundred-year marathon, the Chinese Communist Party intends to integrate Hong Kong and Taiwan back into China in time to achieve ‘Middle Kingdom’ status by 2049—the centennial of the CCP’s victory over the Guomindang in the Chinese civil war.

For many of the China experts on whom the Biden administration will rely for advice, working collaboratively with China is a tenet of the faith that cannot be questioned. They also see a policy of ambiguity concerning US security guarantees with Taiwan as essential.

However, as the PLA rachets up pressure on Taiwan to reunify, Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, and her successor will likely find themselves in a position where they must take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the continued independence of a free and democratic Taiwan—either in coordination with the US or independently.

Taiwan’s leaders sensed the urgency to develop their own nuclear capability once already because of the normalising of relations between the US and the PRC. During the 1970s, Taiwan produced plutonium for its indigenous weapons program. While plutonium production was halted because of American pressure in 1976, the military government in Taiwan continued with its secret nuclear weapons program until the 1980s, which included a successful nuclear reaction.

Taiwan is already a latent nuclear power. The move to nuclear weapons would not take long given its current materials and technical capacity.

Taiwan already has two operational nuclear power plants on opposite ends of the island that could produce plutonium. It could use a ‘Japan option’ of enriching its radioactive materials for weaponisation in a short timeframe.

Would a nuclear-armed Taiwan deter the PRC from an invasion? The use of nuclear weapons by a nuclear-armed Taiwan would certainly make an already difficult invasion for Xi and the PLA more costly. History suggests that once Taiwan has nuclear weapons, the PRC will become much less aggressive towards it—making the development of nuclear weapons more attractive.

Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party, despite its tense relations with the mainland, represents the anti-nuclear movement within Taiwan. However, views change when survival is at stake. It is not a bridge too far to suggest that a reluctant Biden administration and an aggressive Xi might lead Taiwan to see the utility of a nuclear arsenal.

It’s also worth noting that the US has never invaded a nuclear-armed adversary—a fact not lost on the Taiwanese.

Many China experts in the American foreign policy community will dismiss the warning that Taiwan might restart its covert nuclear weapons program. This is because too few American China experts understand the escalating pressure Taiwan faces from Xi’s China.

The Biden administration has time to devise a policy that ensures Taiwan’s security while discouraging the pursuit of nuclear weapons. However, half measures, ambiguity or doing nothing is no longer an option. Taiwan will protect its freedom with or without America’s help.

If the tradition still holds, arriving on Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s desk this week will be a report setting out the Australian intelligence community’s best guesses (they will call them ‘judgements’) as to big strategic developments that could go horribly wrong in 2021.

We will probably never see that report, so in its place here are my best judgements (you can call them ‘guesses’) as to the likely prospects for peace, conflict and the in-between stage now called the ‘grey zone’, where aggressors advance their interests covertly.

Here are a couple of take-to-the-bank strategic certainties for 2021. First, there will be no repair or reset to our China relationship because the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping thinks it’s essential to ‘punish’ Australia so that other democracies don’t get the uppity idea that the party will treat them respectfully as equals.

Beijing is probably just beginning to work through the list of Australian exports to be banned or punished with tariffs. Don’t be surprised if the CCP starts to limit tourist and student visas ahead of any real resumption of travel.

Aggressive and insulting propaganda will ramp up, the worst of it directed to Mandarin speakers. How ugly can it get? Pre-Covid-19 there were more than 10,000 Australian citizens in mainland China and around 100,000 in Hong Kong. The number now will still be substantial. In July, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Smartraveller website advised that Chinese ‘authorities have detained foreigners because they’re “endangering national security”. Australians may also be at risk of arbitrary detention.’

We don’t know how far Xi will take his use of the ideology of ‘struggle’ to mobilise aggressive nationalism, but this is now a central element of his rule. Australians in China need to be conscious of the personal risk this creates.

The irony is that China is helping Australia achieve the substantial delinking from the Chinese economy which our sovereign interests and self-respect needs. Thanks, wolf warriors!

Another certainty is that Australia will continue to be under full-on cyber assault, principally from China, but it’s also likely that the Russian Intelligence hack into America’s government, security and business networks via the Texas company SolarWinds will impact Australia.

The attack using a SolarWinds ‘Orion network monitoring product’ is so serious that the White House’s National Security Council met to discuss it last weekend. Notwithstanding President Donald Trump’s undisciplined tweet suggesting that China rather than Russia was the culprit, it seems most likely that Russian intelligence installed malign code into a legitimate SolarWinds update from March, which SolarWinds sent to 18,000 customers to install.

This software allowed attackers remote access to the unclassified databases of the Pentagon, the US military, intelligence agencies and the organisations managing America’s nuclear arsenal.

Should Australia be worried? A review of the government’s AusTender contract database reveals that many federal departments and agencies are recent customers of SolarWinds, including Defence’s Chief Information Officer Group, the equipment-purchasing Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group, and the Defence Science and Technology Group.

Other recent Australian customers include the cyber intelligence agency the Australian Signals Directorate; the Department of Home Affairs; Austrade; the Department of Education, Skills and Employment; the Department of Finance; the Bureau of Meteorology; and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.

My understanding is that SolarWinds’ compromised Orion product accounts for about half the company’s business. Maybe there’s no problem in Australia—or we’re just yet to hear of a major security compromise. The government’s Australian Cyber Security Centre recommends ‘disabling internet access to Orion servers’.

The wider point is that Australia is under constant, sustained cyberattack from sophisticated and persistent state actors that have shown a determination to get into our networks, ranging from parliament to security and intelligence agencies, universities and businesses.

Does the Morrison government have the right level of attention on cybersecurity? We have yet to hear a minister comment on the SolarWinds attack from an Australian perspective. At the recent ministerial reshuffle, the word ‘cyber’ has disappeared from the title of any minister in Morrison’s second ministry.

It’s true that Foreign Minister Marise Payne has a strong interest in international cyber diplomacy and that Peter Dutton’s Department of Home Affairs released a cyber strategy last August, but cybersecurity is central to supply-chain security and the risk to our critical infrastructure is growing.

What is the risk of military conflict in 2021? Australia’s defence strategic update released in July says that ‘the prospect of high-intensity conflict in the Indo-Pacific, while still unlikely, is less remote than in the past’. In my view this understates the risk.

All through 2020 we have seen China’s military engaged in high-risk exercises and air- and sea-space incursions against neighbours in the South and East China seas and around Taiwan. A bloody hand-to-hand fight along the line of control in the Himalayas saw India and China engaged in direct combat.

Xi’s wolf-warrior nationalism is clearly clouding China’s normally cautious military judgement. Around China’s borders, this burst of nationalist overconfidence could give rise to a military confrontation that starts, perhaps, as the mistaken sinking of a ship or shooting down of an aircraft and then escalates until political intervention pauses military action.

Beijing clearly thinks that it has a window of opportunity to advance its military control around the so-called first island chain from Japan through to Taiwan and the Philippines. With America going through an ugly presidential transition and wracked by Covid-19, Xi may think this is the moment to apply maximum pressure on Taiwan to accept Beijing’s political control.

Would a newly sworn in US President Joe Biden intervene to defend Taiwan? If he failed to do so, that would end America’s Pacific alliances. More likely, Washington would provide military support and expect Japan and Australia to be involved.

What Australia should do in the event of a conflict or a military stand-off over Taiwan is one of these awkward discussions Canberra prefers not to have. But there is no exit strategy from our own region.

Finally, North Korea. Expect Pyongyang to test Biden’s resolve early, either by a nuclear test, possibly atmospheric, or with an intercontinental ballistic missile launch. Over three generations, the Kim regime has sought to push the US into making concessions, offering assistance or at least reducing sanctions in return for nuclear negotiations.

Biden must confront the horrible reality that North Korea now has close to a reliable capacity to hit an American city with a nuclear warhead. Trump’s failed attempt to negotiate directly with Kim Jong-un leaves Biden with deadly unfinished business.

In this edition, we take a look at how the Chinese military is preparing for the future land combat environment.

Unlike China’s relatively cogent thinking on future warfare in the air, maritime, cyber and space domains, its thinking on land combat has been increasingly incoherent. Indeed, the strategic priorities the Chinese Communist Party has been setting for the military since the 1980s have required a shift in emphasis from land power to air and sea power. With the Soviet Union gone and China’s land borders largely settled (disputes with India notwithstanding), the People’s Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF) has struggled to find a meaningful purpose in China’s future force structure beyond sustaining the capability needed to win a limited war on the Sino-Indian border.

Some of the incoherence is best laid out by military commentators within China itself. In an article in the People’s Liberation Army Daily, Wang Ronghui seeks to explore the role armoured forces will have in future warfare. Writing with much jargon and little detail, Wang argues that the recent history of armed conflict has confirmed the armoured forces’ role as the ‘king of land warfare’ (陆战之王).

Armoured forces, Wang observes, have proved adept at ‘incorporating highly advanced weapons technology’. Equipment such as armoured fighting vehicles and main battle tanks have become sufficiently flexible and adaptable to changes on an information-dense battlefield. Without providing much evidence, Wang argues that these characteristics of armoured warfare have effectively disproved the ‘useless tank theory’ (坦克无用论).

After beginning the essay with vague statements about the nature of land warfare, Wang moves on to provide a strategic rationale for why the PLAGF needs a strong armoured force. ‘Armoured forces have important missions in resolving territorial disputes, resisting foreign invasion, stabilising borders and safeguarding territory along with other warfighting roles’, he says.

There are significant issues with this line of argument. Not only have China’s land borders largely been settled, but, on the one land border that China hasn’t settled, namely with India in the Himalayan mountains, armoured forces would find it extremely hard to operate as the terrain is extremely rugged. Absent a critical security threat, the main uses of armoured forces would be for stabilisation missions along the North Korean border, exercises in Central Asia with members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and, perhaps, in a land invasion of Russia or Mongolia. What this suggests is that China’s land warfare thinkers are struggling to find a sustainable role for armour in the PLA’s force structure.

With those thoughts in mind, what does the future hold for the PLA’s ground forces? Politically, the PLAGF has always been the dominant force in the Central Military Commission. Yet China’s 2015 defence white paper emphasised that the PLAGF needed greater mobility between theatres, and suggested an emphasis on small, multifunctional and modular units that would enable the PLAGF to adapt itself to tasks in different regions.

This emphasis on greater mobility and flexibility is influencing capability development and shaping the nature of military exercises, with a growing emphasis on combined arms mechanisation, and joint and integrated military operations. The 2019 defence white paper notes that the PLAGF ‘is speeding up the transition of its tasks from regional defense to trans-theater operations, and improving the capabilities for precise, multi-dimensional, trans-theater, multi-functional and sustained operations, so as to build a new type of strong and modernized land force.’

More recently, there have been indications that a goal in the 14th Five Year Plan (2021–2025) will be to accelerate military modernisation so that the PLA will be fully mechanised and informationised by 2027—the 100th anniversary of its founding. Chinese military expert Dean Cheng argues that that will require a major reduction in forces, a major budget increase or a redefining of what constitutes ‘informationised’ units.

The lingering effects of Covid-19 on the Chinese economy are likely to place pressure on the defence budget, forcing the PLA to focus more on developing a streamlined, ‘meaner but leaner’ military. With the PLA Navy, Air Force, Rocket Force and Strategic Support Force eating up most of the funding, it’s possible that the PLAGF will face further cuts.

The challenge for the PLAGF leadership is seeing this as an opportunity rather than a risk. Trimming the fat by scrapping outdated capabilities and reshaping army organisation to be better prepared for warfare in a variety of operational theatres would allow the PLAGF to play a more even role alongside air, naval, space and missile forces. That could mean lighter, more agile and mobile ground forces, integrated with army aviation and long-range fires, as well as a greater focus on embracing technology such as lethal autonomous weapons.

China’s military is facing the same challenges as most of the world’s armed forces—how to transform and adapt to new approaches to operations and new types of technology within constrained budgets. For the PLAGF leadership, that may mean having the courage to throw off old capabilities that were suited towards ‘people’s war under modern conditions’ in the 1980s and instead move decisively towards integrated joint operations as part of informationised and intelligentised warfare for the 21st century. It also means prioritising an ability to deploy rapidly across multiple theatres within China and to project force beyond China.

Given that the principal strategic direction for the PLA remains ‘reunification’ with Taiwan and, more broadly, China’s littoral in the western Pacific, the PLAGF must have the ability to be an expeditionary force. Getting bogged down with heavy armour may be the wrong move.

The requirement for nimble, expeditionary forces that can operate in an information-dense environment should shape the future capability development of the PLAGF in coming years. The question is whether it will.

In this special episode, The Strategist’s Anastasia Kapetas speaks to some of the team behind ASPI’s research on Xinjiang about their recently launched Xinjiang Data Project and the potential global implications of China’s treatment of the Uyghurs in the region.

Kelsey Munro, Nathan Ruser and James Leibold discuss their research, which mapped out 380 detention facilities in Xinjiang that have been built or expanded on since 2017.

They also talk about their research on cultural erasure in Xinjiang which traced the destruction of mosques and other significant Uyghur cultural sites in the region and estimated that 16,000 mosques have been destroyed or damaged in the last three years.