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Congressional Research Service
Informning th legisIative deate sin ce 1914
Taiwan: Defense and Military Issues
August 24, 2023
U.S. policy toward Taiwan has long prioritized the
maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
To dissuade the People's Republic of China (PRC) from
using force to try to gain control of self-governing Taiwan
(which officially calls itself the Republic of China), the
United States has supported Taiwan's military deterrence
efforts and sought to strengthen Taiwan's own capability to
deter PRC military aggression in the region. One challenge
for the United States has been how to deepen military ties
with Taiwan without triggering the conflict that U.S. policy
seeks to prevent. See CRS In Focus IF10275, Taiwan:
Political and Security Issues, for background on Taiwan's
political status, the unofficial relationship between Taiwan
and the United States, and the PRC's claim to sovereignty
over Taiwan.
aiwan's mecui
ry Situation
Advantages
Taiwan has a technologically advanced military that is
tasked with deterring-and if necessary, defeating-PRC
military aggression against the archipelago. Taiwan enjoys
some military advantages, including geography and
climate: the Taiwan Strait is 70 nautical miles (nm) wide at
its narrowest point, and 220 nm wide at its widest; extreme
weather conditions make the Strait perilous to navigate at
certain times of the year. Moreover, Taiwan's mountainous
terrain and densely populated coastal areas are largely
unsuitable for amphibious landing and invasion operations.
Taiwan's defense budget is expanding nominally and as a
share of gross domestic product; Taiwan's 2023 defense
budget of around U.S. $24.6 billion represents nearly a 10%
increase from 2022. Taiwan's defense relationship with the
United States (detailed below) confers a range of political
and military advantages as well.
Challenges
Taiwan faces an increasingly asymmetric power balance
across the Strait. The Communist Party of China's military,
the People's Liberation Army (PLA), has undergone a
decades-long modernization program focused primarily on
developing the capabilities needed to prevail in a conflict
over Taiwan. Some observers assess that the PLA now is
able, or will soon be able, to execute a range of military
campaigns against Taiwan. The PLA trains for operations
such as missile strikes, seizures of Taiwan's small outlying
islands, blockades, and-the riskiest and most challenging
campaign for the PLA-an amphibious landing and
invasion of Taiwan's main island.
Taiwan also faces defense challenges at home. Civil-
military relations are strained for historical, political, and
bureaucratic reasons. The archipelago's energy, food,
water, internet, and other critical infrastructure systems are
vulnerable to external disruption. Civil defense
preparedness is insufficient, according to some observers,
and Taiwan's military struggles to recruit, retain, and train
personnel. At a societal level, it is not clear what costs-in
terms of economic security, well-being, safety and security,
and lives-Taiwan's people would be willing or able to
bear in the face of possible PRC armed aggression.
In 2023, U.S. officials have said on several occasions that a
PRC invasion of Taiwan is neither imminent nor
inevitable. In February 2023, U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency Director William J. Burns said that PRC leader Xi
Jinping has instructed the PLA to be ready to conduct a
successful invasion [of Taiwan]. Now that does not mean
that he's decided to conduct an invasion in 2027 or any
other year. But it's a reminder of the seriousness of his
focus and his ambition. Previously, U.S. officials had
publicly cited specific years in the mid-2020s as possible
target dates for a PLA attack on Taiwan, sparking alarm
and reinvigorating debates among experts and policymakers
about how to allocate limited time and resources to shore up
Taiwan's resilience to PRC military aggression.
PRC Gray Zone Pressure Against Taiwan
Below the threshold of an all-out attack, the PLA currently
is engaging in persistent, low-level, non-combat operations
that analysts say are eroding Taiwan's military advantages
and readiness. Such gray zone actions include:
* large and increasingly complex military exercises;
* near-daily PLA air operations in the vicinity of Taiwan,
including frequent sorties across the so-called median
line, an informal boundary bisecting the Taiwan Strait
that PLA aircraft rarely crossed prior to 2022;
* routine PLA naval patrols on the Taiwan side of the
median line, some as close as 24 nm from Taiwan's main
island; and
* unmanned combat aerial vehicle flights near and
encircling Taiwan, and reported flights of unmanned
aerial vehicles in the airspace of Kinmen, an outlying
island of Taiwan located next to the PRC coast.
The PRC government often ramps up these gray zone
activities following high-profile engagements between
senior policymakers of the United States (including
Members of Congress) and Taiwan. PRC leaders claim that
these engagements are evidence that Washington uses
Taiwan as a pawn to undermine and contain China, and
often respond with large-scale military exercises simulating
operations against Taiwan as a serious warning against
Taiwan separatist forces colluding with external forces.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.crs/govempy0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)