Thread by @WilliamYang120

Former US deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger held another online presser with media based in #Taiwan an hour ago. Here are some important points he touched on:

"The United States always must lead if the important conversations about contingency plans that need to take place are going to take place. Right now, there are important conversations that are taking place, often low key but sometimes, with Taiwan and sometimes without Taiwan."

"Many different formats but what you find is countries around the region are responding to Beijing’s massive military build-up.

There is naturally a reaction to that in the form of policy discussions and new budgets toward improving defensive capabilities of democratic countries throughout the region."

"One important example is Japan at the end of last year, published three documents, which add up to a new national security strategy for Japan.

I was in Japan not long before my trip to Taiwan and I was struck in my meetings with government officials and journalists and people in civil society groups how much concern there is with the Japanese public over Beijng’s stated intentions and Beijng’s arming itself ...

... and some of Beijing’s rather alarming and coercive use of its economic power to try to force political concession by countries throughout the region."

"Taiwan makes its own decisions about what weapons to buy and which weapons not to buy. It’s sometimes true that the US tries to dissuade Taiwan from purchasing certain weapon systems and Taiwan often ignores that and in fact, ...

... makes its own decisions to buy systems that the MND thinks are important."

"I would ask that people who are raising concerns about that system also vocalize concerns about the significant increase in missiles and rockets that the PLA is deploying against Taiwan right now.

They intend to use those rockets against Taiwan and sometimes you hear these very comical phrases from Beijing that these weapons are only used to target Taiwan independence supporters.

I think you can see from the images in Ukraine that missiles don’t distinguish between one set of people or people who hold one political belief or another political belief."

"I would love to see more focus in Taiwan’s public discourse on the types of weapons that Beijing is aiming at Taiwan, even as we discuss all the defensive weapons that Taiwan is considering acquiring in order to deter or win a war."

"One of the things that we came to understand about Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy is that the strategy is designed to acquire coercive economic leverage over other countries ...

... and one of the key areas where Beijing is focused on is the area of semiconductor design and manufacturing.

Xi Jinping has given speech about this back in 2020 and there was the 14th five-year plan that was published in March 2021. In these speeches what we see is a policy of acquiring coercive leverage."

"The term that Xi uses is a deterrent even though he frames it in defensive terms. What we’ve seen is Beijing wants to dominate semiconductor manufacturing so it no longer has to depend on imports from Taiwan, the Untied States or the other parts of the world.

But if you go a step further and use its dominance of semiconductors and after acquiring a dominant position, Beijing’s public statements said that it wants to control 80 to 90% of those markets."

"It would then be able to hold hostage the economy of other countries, just like it spent the last two and a half years trying to hold hostage of the Australian economy in order to force political concessions by the Australian government.

The US view, which is bipartisan, is that we don’t want Beijing to acquire that kind of leverage where it could hold our economic prosperity at risk."

"The October 7 Biden Administration export controls do a great service in trying to prevent Beijing from fulfilling its strategic ambition of dominating semiconductor manufacturing.

That’s why it’s really to design to prevent equipment and skilled labor from being exported from the US to China to work on high-end semiconductor manufacturing.

The flip side of that same strategy is a US effort to increase its own semiconductor manufacturing not radically but to a level of competency that would cause Beijing to have doubts about whether it would be able to achieve monopoly control over the semiconductor industry."

"The reason that I and others in the US national security realm think this is a good strategy is that it would create doubts in Beijng’s mind about whether by invading Taiwan, it would be able to further consolidate control of those industries.

Basically, allowing there to be small clusters of high-end capability deeply enmeshed with Taiwan.

This is designed to more deeply integrate the US and Taiwan as well as Taiwan and other parts of the world into that ecosystem and to create a deterrent against the temptation on Beijng’s part to try to invade Taiwan in order to dominate semiconductor manufacturing."

"We don’t know the timeline for a possible attack on Taiwan would be but I think we should be taking steps to deter that attack from ever taking place.

In terms of semiconductors, there is a popular idea that I sometimes hear in Taiwan and other parts of the world that Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing dominance provides a 'silicon shield' against an invasion."

"I don’t think there is such a thing as a 'silicon shield' and the way that Leninist dictators think is very unlike the way that rational democratic people and companies think.

Therefore, we shouldn’t kid ourselves that there is a silicon shield. We don’t know what’s in Xi Jinping’s mind but there is propaganda suggesting the opposite of a silicon shield."

"I’ve seen some Chinese nationalistic lectures and public figures who give talks saying that Taiwan’s dominance in semiconductors is a reason why Beijing should invade Taiwan.

I think that thinking is completely crazy because Beijing would essentially be destroying semiconductor manufacturing capacity in Taiwan even if they didn’t damage those facilities."

"The facilities would quickly degrade over time and wouldn’t be able to function very well due to export controls that would follow a successful invasion.

What we want to do is deter an invasion and obliterate the delusional thinking that seems to have caught the imagination of some people in Beijing that they should invade Taiwan in order to acquire semiconductor manufacturing capability.

Taiwan, the US, European countries, Japan and others are not going to allow Beijing to acquire a dominant position in semiconductor manufacturing."

"If Beijing was serious about wanting to talk, it would have done talking seven years ago when President Tsai Ing-wen was inaugurated and made I thought a rather remarkable first speech in her inauguration, ...

... making clear that she was open to dialogue and open to maintaining the status quo rather than destabilizing the status quo."

"Beijing chose to completely freeze out Taiwan’s government and we need to be very clear about the pressure for a change of status quo is not coming from Taiwan, it’s not coming from the US and Taiwan’s friends but it’s coming from Beijing.

So all of the things we are talking to Taiwan about the need to be understood as things happening in reaction to Beijing no longer being committed to the status quo of the Taiwan Strait."

"The status quo has served everyone pretty well. The rest of the region has always appreciated the commitment to the status quo. The pressure to upend the status quo is really with Beijing.

That said, I do think we need to constantly evaluate what we are doing with our friends in Taiwan and be thoughtful and calibrated in the steps that we take.

We should never refrain from steps substantively improve the odds of deterring warfare and maintaining stability in the Taiwan Strait."

"The most destabilizing threats are those actions coming from Beijing. I think taking concrete, substantive steps to improve Taiwan’s defensive posture and that of the US and its allies in the region would be steps that would help bolster the status quo, not to destabilize it."