To taiwan and whether china could direct military exercises towards the u. S. This is about 90 minutes. Director of the China Project and senior fellow at the center of international studies. They for joining us thank you for joining us this morning. Nancy pelosis recent visit to taiwan because escalated tension in around the taiwan straight. The chinese conducted a largescale surrounding the island after her visit. Chinese missile test splashed down time once territory waters. We gathered together to analyze the militarys efforts for Speaker Pelosis visit. What does behavior mean for the future . Joining me today to shed light on these pressing military issues is our five military scholars. I will introduce them in ever medical order. The first is dr. Taylor for apple. He is the author and professor of Political Science at mic. Next we have christina. She is a researcher. Next we have jaclyn hill. We have dr. Rodrick lee. Cassie at ayres university and last but not least, associate professor at nasa Security Affairs at the naval postgraduate school. We want to thank all of our panelists and experts were joining us today. We hope to have three rounds of questions for each of the panelists and i will weave in question from the audience. For those of you missing the you have the link on the page. Let me start us off with the first round of questions. What happened militarily around the taiwan straight . Can you discuss what you saw over the most significant mentions of the china and why should we care . It is great to be here with such distinguished colleagues. Late in the evening through the second of august, through the 10th. From the fourth of august, to the 10. The exercises overall were longer in duration. The first is location. The military exercises, especially the live fire portion occurred in areas where they never occurred before. And a greater set of numbers than ever before. In the north, targets included a main port in the north and also a main port in the south. Targeting taiwan generally happened along the coast, with the exception of submittal theirs. Instant medical miles, on taiwan are really unprecedented. You can see how much a final one surrounding circles. We are going to hear much more from rod and chris and others on this dimension. A combination of firepower strikes either against maritime targets that can be used in blockade or an invasion scenario that would will great that would relate. We also had missiles flying over taiwan. The number flying over the art with fear is not quite certain to be one to four missiles were fired into 300 areas. One of those areas was on the east coast of taiwan. That psychologically has a powerful effect or could have a more powerful effect. That was a noteworthy aspect of these exercises. A third would be what is really being exercised. We will get more into this. These are maybe one of the largest or more complex of the 2016 reforms that were put into place for pla which created these five theater commands. These exercises were overseen by the main scenario or contingency. There is an opportunity to test. How integrated and how joint these exercises were remains an open question. I dont necessarily have enough to answer. They describe being involved and i believe a joint logistics force. This separates from specific activities. To wrap up, in the process, lots of different norms were broken, were previous patterns of behaviors were shattered. It is noteworthy here because of the crossing of the central line. This is a line roughly halfway between taiwan. It was a Crisis Management mechanism to keep military aircraft on their respective sides of the street and with the start of these exercises continuing daily until today. Chinese aircraft across multiple points in the south, west of taiwan, in the north of taiwan, sometimes in the center. It does create a new normal military activity in the area that could raise the possibility of escalation in the future. For the other norm is firing missiles. That was completely shattered. There was some discussion in 1996. One missile may have overflown the tip. That is not an accurate report. This would be the first time we have seen that norm being shattered as well. Finally, having exercise so close to taiwan, clearly another norm that has been shattered. Clearly expect we are going to see more in the future. Really looking forward to the rest of the discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me turn to chris now to cover more on the naval side of the operations. Thanks, bonnie for organizing this and the ci this csis. My own personal thoughts, not speaking for the navy school or the navy itself. I think taylor really late down the Foundation Pretty well. Let me emphasize a couple of different aspects. One, my sense is the naval midline violations are an attempt to kind of set a new normal practice for the pla to allow future deployments across that midline to be routinized and expected political pressure. More so than their military operation or relevance. One of the other precedents that was overturned in the missile launches was the landing of several missiles in japanese eb zs in way that certainly china would have been aware of and could well have been a signal to japan. In terms of the size of the navy operations, they are somewhat larger. The navy for an extended for an extended time now has the ability to deplore certain action groups that great distance from chinas actions sure. There isnt anything grossly different in this area. Although the Eastern Theater command took the lead, there was some activity from other fleets as well. Although it seems fairly modest. This gets back to the key question that taylor raised, how much joint and integrated operations across the Different Services were even within the Maritime Service was there interaction between maritime and submarine Service Vessels . My sins has been from the very limited report coming out of the chinese news media that that was fairly sparse in terms of that Cross Service integration. That has been a real challenge for the pla. It is what the 2015 refer 2015 reforms were centered on for the basis of that. It is worth noted the pelosi came from some extent. To some extent, missiles and the straight midline violations were not a part of the preplanned, but some of the other activities may have been. Two final points and im going to turn it over to for his thoughts. There is very little resemblance to how the pill the poa would conduct an assault. You wouldnt use missiles dropping into large boxes to enforce a blockade. There are no visit boards, search and seizure activities dbs as. Or careful air patrols that were integrated with naval followups. Nothing reported publicly that would have been a part of a blockade. Surrounding the island on a same basis. Checking ships going in and out. Checking what they are carrying, see if they are bound for chinese or japanese waters. The way to think about both the maritime is a political signal. The personal or a prelude to outright invasion and was primarily a political signal of displeasure aimed at the highways aimed at the american authorities. Why dont i stop there . Thanks, chris. Looking at the airside, things we have seen before. We have seen an increase in the number of flights around the taiwan area in terms of the fighters and bombers. The midlife crossings are a new scale. That was a high point scale. Nothing we have seen in the past couple of days has exceeded that. On that side, the air presence has been more sustained. The scale has not seen much greater than anything past. The overflight areas the vast major focus of these military activities are theessage of what they would classify as military activities. You can kind of dial your presence up and down both in quantitative and qualitative since, in a pretty rapid fashion. You can adjust the number of flights you are doing each day. Adjust where they are flying, how they are flying. You could say im going to put out 30 aircraft today and 32 tomorrow and maybe tomorrow. That shows a pretty clear message. Taiwan is giving you to pass all that information. We have seen them use it over the past two years around taiwan. It looks like the most recent military activity are unlocking options. We are starting to demonstrate a lot more confidence here. I would like to highlight two factors. Although we didnt see it, based on our understanding of missiles assigned to the Eastern Theater command, they fall under called base 51. I am fairly certain we didnt see them publicly, they didnt show video footage of it. It is important to note that not everything is intended for public consumption. Another angle on the missile side worth highlighting is it is not a missile per se, we did see army drop their military fires out of the 72nd military army. One of those three group armies assigned to a taiwan mission. If we are talking about some indications to join us after the reforms, i want to highlight, and chris already mentioned this, the activities we are seeing are very much intended for messaging and deterrence purposes. Although they are a scale, we do see relatively largescale in other areas. The air force conducts annual the number of aircraft involved is probably greater than what we are seeing right now. All of this leads towards a better hermit. A largescale summer exercise will get them a lot more bang for their buck. I want to really hammer home on the air and is very much for messaging. The training is nice to have. Great. Thank you very much, rod. On that note, let me turn to christina. From your perspective, as you look at the Chinese Military activities and in thailand, maybe they have not been that significant on the airside, and how do you differentiate these current activities from typical chinese gray zone activities . Given your research, how would you speak to that . I will speak to that. If you want me to cover u. S. Response as well, i can do that also. What we are seeing is broadly consistent with chinas gray zone approaches. In the sense of combining military and nonmilitary activities in the region against its neighbors. We see chinas gray zone approach. Leveraging all National Resources available. That could include diplomatic, economic, financial or any type of form of coercion. We have seen this against japan, india, vietnam, philippines, many in the region, as well as taiwan. During these exercises we also saw diplomatic statements by china going towards any allied partner who raises concern about u. S. Behavior. The drones, that rotted mentioned, probing various locations, trade measures, imports and banning some exports. This information and cyber attacks. Second, we have seen china increasing its overtime against taiwan in conjunction with building up these lower military activities each summer. In july and august 2019, in the South China Sea and the east china sea. In 2020, we saw simultaneous military on north and south of taiwan. We have seen this major ramp up over the past year and used by aircraft across the median line. We have also seen a growth and Cyber Capabilities try to manipulate the environment and attacked Chinese Government and other websites. Other activity is not typical. The amount of live fire, multiple missiles potentially fight essentially flying over taiwan. What this conveys, based on some research poking some research recently published, against taiwan in the region. Combining with this geopolitical pressure. Seeing that continue as we go forward with these Grassroots Efforts to shape the opinion in taiwan society. If you could really touch on what you saw as the initial u. S. Response and we could followup on this more in round two. Absolutely. I will highlight three areas. Plans for a maritime transit over subsequent weeks. We havent yet seen one of those announcements. They are typically announced after they occur. The last was july 19, four the exercises began in early august. We could potentially see this again coming up soon. Second we saw the secretary of defense with Kevin Stryker to carry in the east of taiwan. Along with we know from zone scenes that we saw Ronald Reagan depart. Cerda, we also saw washington take some plans to postpone missile test. The message was to avoid potential miscalculation. This was the behavior of response of nuclear power. Great. Thank you very much, christina. Let me turn to catherine to ask for your thoughts on how did you see taiwanss response to this. What did you see as the main taiwan military or military response . Sure. Taiwans response was heavy on the nonmilitary side. The taiwan government also sees this. As an operation that has political aims from the chinese side. Taiwans military did, with regard to the chinese aaron, naval saying they did something they hadnt done before, which is sending taiwanese naval vessels close to the chinese ones. Especially on the median line. Playing a little bit of cat and mouse and trying to prevent the chinese from crossing the line. On the other side of the island, in the east, also staying close and making sure this backandforth was weighing the pal the pla from the nonmilitary side, from the Chinese Military, they had two goals i think they were pursuing. One is the domestic audience. Ensuring that no panic would occur. And that public morale wouldnt take a blow. They are strong, they are prepared. They do not shy away from fighting. But they certainly are not itching for a fight. They kept repeating this every day, maybe twice a day to reassure the public. That clearly worked. On the other hand, there was messaging to the National Community in the person of the foreign minister. And described him as an attempt to try to change the status quo and appeal to the as far as what is going on now, the taiwanese government hasnt really made a very clear cut they have adopted a waitandsee attitude. As far as i know, the administration is conducting the review of declared exercises and the plas Movement Since then. What i heard was that not considered there are doubts as to how to respond if this happens again. They want to discuss this with you is. How to quickly create or build up. Thank you very much, catherine. We appreciate you for bringing out the nonmilitary responses. That was a critical component. Let me turn this into a second round of questions. I want to get out i want to get at, is this a crisis . We are seeing both thingy the United States and in some places, taiwan. It continues to execute and taiwan has decreased. Let me start off by turning to chris. I know you have a piece just published on the war in ironic. Why dont we start with how this is a crisis in how you see this moving forward . I hope i am wrong. I hope that piece of the title is shown to be false Going Forward. I suspect that is not the case. This is likely the early stages of a crisis that is going to continue to percolate for months. If you look at the historic president s in 1954, 95, 96, those went on for about eight months. 1950 one was over a. Of three months it developed. Some of the reasons are just highlighted. The u. S. Is talking about transits of the straight. About flying. Wherever international allows. Is it going to be important for us to send signals to our allies, as well as china . That we are not being deterred by these exercises. That response is going to be provocative to the chinese. They are going to need to show their own population that they have a response to the u. S. s response to their exercises. If one source of continuing pressure is more broadly the surging of forces that the u. S. Engaged in to beef up the seven fleets in terms of its overall numbers, putting it to see a marine site desk during its earlier stages of the crisis, there are other stages to. Other delegation have passed through. The japanese is going to send delegation to taiwan. All of these occur in normal times. The heightened salience means all those sorts of video all those sorts of visits get more attention Going Forward. Fundamentally, we shouldnt look at this crisis solely as a response to Speaker Pelosis visit, but more broadly from the chinese perspective. There has been a series of salami slicing tech made against the traditional u. S. One chinese policy that treats the taiwan situation as somewhat a normal list. Provides taiwan with a different sort of political and diplomatic status than countries that have normal complete diplomatic normal normalization. They need to draw some clear, bright red line to communicate to the United States, taiwan and to others that further erosion of our china one policy is not going to be acceptable to the chinese. That is likely to put additional pressure on china to communicate, communicating to communicate to ensure further erosion of the way taiwan is treated as a secondclass citizen in the interNational Community doesnt occur. Those broader causes as well as some of the narrower operations, they started off talking about reasons i suspect this crisis is going to continue to work late and develop over a. Of months. Thank you, chris. Christina, do you agree with chris that this is a crisis . And from the perspective of u. S. Partners. Do they view this as a crisis and how have they responded . Going back to the gray zone operations, this transition pressure we put on we could see more potential flashpoints. There were multiple Decision Point from washington over that time. We will see how is reacting and how washington is framing this Going Forward. We have seen a number of activities by partners. Statements of others with the g7 and other high representatives. China responded very negatively to that saying the g 70 is the eight powered forces. There is also a trilateral statement between the u. S. Showing japan firing missiles. We also saw france called sharing concerns about chinas actions. Focusing on the live fire and Ballistic Missiles. Japan and kind of more muted statements from the nato chief. We have also seen some messaging by the u. S. Involving military operations of the u. S. And other cou