China

Viscount Waverley Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

My Lords, today takes us back to the report last September, The UK and China’s security and trade relationship: A strategic void. It says it all: a singular lack of understanding of China, its mentality and future plans.

Indicators point, I fear, to China triggering an invasion of Taiwan to assert its one-China policy. This presents two conundrums: first, Taiwan having been delisted as a UN nation state in 1979 and, secondly, liberal democracies believing that steps to strengthen relations with Taiwan would instigate retaliatory measures from Beijing. The ripple effects that would extend across the region, however, should not be underestimated, with China having to spend years pacifying Taiwan, both militarily and politically. China must believe that sanctions represent deterrence and an existential economic threat by Western countries curtailing trade while being challenged in parallel to protect vital logistical supply routes before China ends dollar-based transactions.

The US maintains a position of strategic ambiguity. It pursues a deterrence and reassurance strategy and deliberates on how to reduce the possibility of war by exploring conflict contingency plans, notwithstanding the Taiwan Relations Act, by which the US provides Taiwan with defensive capabilities. It juggles that by leading in the applying of economic, political and cultural sanctions, with the retaliatory freezing of Chinese assets, confiscation of Chinese-origin organisations and decoupling of information technology companies.

Sanctions are not the only deterrent, however. Any invasion would hinge on intricate military and logistical planning, requiring an amphibious assault across the large sea gap to reach Taiwan. It is fortified by heavily forested mountain ridges running the length of the island and is, crucially, mostly urban, which would present China’s forces with significant losses. China would likely resort to activating kinetic strikes using long range hypersonic ballistic weaponry with the spectre of threatening to go nuclear or, at the very least, escalating cyberspace activity and targeting a range of critical Western infrastructure by secretly deploying Trojan horse missiles in shipping containers positioned in Western ports.

Concluding on a less gloomy note however, a window still exists to pour oil on troubled waters, but Western policymakers and diplomats need to up the game and face the gravity of the situation with a supercharged, innovative carrot-and-stick strategy. I have just one question, which follows the initial remarks of the noble Lord, Lord West. The other day, I asked for comment on the background to NATO leaders agreeing to a

“strategic concept, which addresses China and its systematic challenges to collective security”—[Official Report, 7/7/22; col. 1151.]

at the recent NATO summit. Was the statement designed to be ambiguous?