By Kamlesh K Agnihotri

The Chinese State Council issued a White Paper titled “China’s National Security in the New Era” on May 12, 2025.  Though the full text of the White Paper is available in Chinese language only, an abstract in the English language has been officially released. While the White Paper’s abstract tries to project China quite self-effacingly as a stabilizing force in a rather disorderly world — with not a single mention of Taiwan — an old adage that “the devil lies in detail” must always be remembered. Accordingly, the only English-translated version placed in the open domain by Dr. Andrew Erickson, a US-based world-renown China watcher, was scanned with a toothcomb to ascertain greater insights into the Chinese thought-process towards national security, particularly vis-a-vis their neighbourhood and the surrounding maritime areas of interest.       

Taiwan of course, remains the most proximate fractious issue for China. The current White Paper has accordingly, reiterated the well-known Chinese position by stating that “China will never allow any person, any organization, any political party, at any time, in any form, to separate any piece of Chinese territory from China”. A search of the White Paper for the word ‘Taiwan’ keeping this context in mind, threw-up 12 results. The most vehement articulation was expectedly in relation to the ‘reunification’, with the overall strategy of the Communist Party of China in the new era being focused towards solving the “Taiwan issue and its major policies toward Taiwan”.

The other context was with regard to certain supposedly external forces playing a deliberate ‘Taiwan card’, and grossly interfering in “China’s internal affairs, causing trouble in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea and the East China Sea”. Taiwan has been specifically called out by stating that “Taiwan independence forces are stubbornly adhering to their separatist positions and taking risks and provocations.” While there is no clarity on whether and when the contingency of reunification would occur, Beijing in the meanwhile, is exploiting all avenues to isolate Taiwan by other means and stratagems. The assertion of the White Paper to the effect that “Taiwan is a province of China and has no basis, reason or right to participate in the United Nations and other international organizations” is a telling commentary in this regard.

Sometimes the aggressive display of the Chinese military might, coupled with the extraordinarily threatening media onslaught makes the global security analysts really wonder whether the doomsday scenario of Taiwan’s reunification — which has been under active discussion at least, since the turn of this century — is actually around the corner. Nothing exemplifies this affliction better than the vitriolic articulation in the Global Times on October 14, 2024, barely four days after President Lai delivered his first Taiwan National Day public speech on October 10, 2024. The opinion piece was published to coincide with the conduct of Exercise JOINT SWORD 2024B by the PLA and other maritime law enforcement authorities of China at proximate sea location all around Taiwan and various outlying islands. Its wording to the effect that “two swords hung over the Taiwan independence separatist forces — One of military punishment, and the other of judicial punishment” — could not have been more ominous.

As for the Chinese military exercises in the Taiwan strait and in fact, all around Taiwan; this trend has progressively assumed particularly alarming proportions in terms of incremental increase in the scope, scale, intensity and frequency ever since the visit of Ms. Nancy Pelosi, the Chairman of the US House of Representatives to Taiwan in August 2022. The PLA Air Force aircraft have been wilfully violating the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) of Taiwan, virtually on a daily basis since then. The conduct of two JOINT SWORD 2024 exercises, nearly coincident with important national ceremonies of Taiwan — first with the Presidential inauguration in May and the second with national Day celebrations in October — clearly symbolized the antagonistic stance of the Chinese leadership.  The escalatory trend has continued well into this year also, with Exercise STRAIT THUNDER 2025A, with the stated objective of “seizing control of key areas and controlling chokepoints”, being conducted on  April 1 and 2, 2025. 

This northward trajectory in the tempo of Chinese military exercises around Taiwan, when seen in conjunction with the Chinese resolve and possible suitability of the timeframe for attempting reunification, as mentioned in the Taiwan White Paper of August 2022, must be noted by the global security community with due seriousness it deserves.  The mention of 2027 as a possible window for the occurrence of this contingency, by successive Admirals-in-charge of the US Indo-Pacific Command in open media interventions at regular intervals, has only fuelled the global concern.

Given the possibility of this horrific event actually coming to pass in near future — as clearly articulated in various official Papers of ‘White’ nomenclature, and equally implied by the ‘grey’ intentions of the Chinese military — Taiwan in particular, and the World at-large, must prepare in right earnest for it.  The first line of effort towards that preparation must include a thorough knowledge of the domain in-, from-and through which the threat is likely to manifest itself — the veritable Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). While the national security establishment of Taiwan must certainly be doing what it can in that direction, it is always a better strategy to collaborate with like-minded stakeholders for achieving synergized outputs which can be of beneficial usage of all such players. 

The space-based MDA technologies and applications — with an ability to cover a greater area, provide better transparency and offer low latency — now form an intrinsic part of the MDA architecture. It is common knowledge that Taiwan aims to make the best use of the space domain to augment its MDA. It is equally well known that India runs a vibrant and successful space programme, comprising the entire spectrum related to the space-based technologies and applications, be it rocket manufacture, satellite building, launch services covering different orbital requirements, satellite payloads, and ground-based services. 

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has also made it easy for other countries to access these services by creating another corporate body named New Space India Limited (NSIL) for exactly this purpose, and that too at much cheaper costs. The Indian Space industry ecosystem has also spawned many credible start-ups, and Taiwan is already engaging with some of them. Thus, herein lies the real potential for meaningful and mutually beneficial collaboration between India and Taiwan.

Kamlesh K Agnihotri is a Senior Fellow at the National Maritime Foundation, New Delhi, India. He was a MOFA Taiwan Fellow-2024 wherein he researched on the maritime security issues in the Western Pacific Ocean, including cross-Strait relations at the National Chengchi University.

Views expressed in this article are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication, The Indo-Pacific Politics.