If China succeeded in bringing Taiwan to heel by conquest or intimidation, the consequences would be dire, especially for Japan. Possession of Taiwan would give China a bastion in a key position within the first island chain, and bring into Beijing's calculations the inviting prospect of bringing Japan itself to heel. But Japan would resist. Having lost confidence in US protection, Japan would then have no choice but to develop long range maritime power projection capabilities to protect its SLOCS. For the Asia Pacific region, the consequences would be highly destabilizing, since few trust Japan.
In relation to Taiwan now, China is banking on the hope that the United States, which they see as casualty-shy, would not risk war in order to intervene in a Chinese 'civil war'. 'Remember Vietnam', the Chinese keep whispering.
We don't know what China concluded from the US naval display near the Taiwan strait in 1995 and 1996. At that time, China sought to use missile launches in the vicinity of Taiwan's ports in order to intimidate Taiwan during its first presidential election. In response, the United States dispatched two battle carrier groups, led by the Nimitz and the Independence (based at Yokosuka) to the vicinity of the Taiwan strait.
To the United States, this seemed a highly satisfactory exercise in gunboat diplomacy. It was the largest concentration of US maritime power in East Asian waters since the Vietnam war. Such a naval display seemed to prove once again the flexibility and mobility of maritime power, as well as its political utility. Taiwan's voters were not intimidated by China, and elected President Lee Teng-hui in a landslide vote. China knew the carriers had the capability to destroy in short order the entire PLA navy. Beijing had not anticipated such a reaction.10
In April 1996, President Clinton visited Japan to announce the much overdue upgrade of the US-Japan alliance. Speaking aboard the Independence in Tokyo Bay, the President alluded to the carrier's recent duty near Taiwan, which he said had 'helped calm a rising storm'. Behind the President, the television pictures showed a Japanese warship flying the hinomaru.11
Those pictures demonstrated how China's own belligerency was undermining one of its key objectives―keeping Japan out of the Taiwan issue. Japan protested against the attempted intimidation of Taiwan, and pointedly noted the importance of maintaining democracy on Taiwan. In August 1995, Japan had suspended its grant aid program in China to protest China's continued nuclear tests. That foreshadowed the end of Japan's postwar appeasement of China.
