The Perils of Mind-Reading in the Taiwan Strait

Por David Tingxuan Zhang — The Diplomat

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Without sustained dialogue over Taiwan, Beijing and Washington are both vulnerable to dangerous misreadings of each other’s intentions.

The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon observed PLAN Luyang III DDG 132 execute maneuvers in what the U.S. called “an unsafe manner” while the Chung-Hoon conducted a routine Taiwan Strait transit alongside the Halifax-class frigate HMCS Montreal, June 3, 2023.

Less than two weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s high-stakes visit to Washington, Beijing reportedly threatened to cancel the planned summit with U.S. President Donald Trump if the United States approved further arms sales to Taiwan. Despite the White House’s silence on arms sales, its top envoy to Taipei last week called securing peace in the Taiwan Strait “one of its top priorities” for the United States.

Beneath this routine exchange of rhetoric lies a persistent problem: For all the attention Beijing and Washington devote to Taiwan, sustained communication over the issue remains thin. With both sides heralding their own version of strategic ambiguity, much of what passes for communication instead takes place at arm’s length – through public statements, arms sales, military deployments, and exercises. Consequently, strategic mind-reading has become a routine part of the relationship.

But constant guessing can harden assumptions more than sharpen judgment, creating precisely the kind of miscalculation that pushes a crisis toward conflict. For all their differences, neither Beijing nor Washington is immune to the risk.

Beijing would seem to have an advantage in the mind-reading game. Unlike China, the United States exposes much of its internal friction in public: issues like defense spending, weapons stocks, and industrial buildout are openly debated and scrutinized. Washington’s apparent difficulty in mobilizing resources and coordinating allied efforts over Ukraine and Iran, set against increasingly fractured domestic politics, can easily be read as evidence of American power in decline. 

That perception has likely fed into Beijing’s calculations over Taiwan, where one of the hardest questions is not whether the United States has the capability to intervene, but whether it would do so quickly enough to shape the course of a crisis. Chinese strategists may therefore be tempted to treat signs of American political dysfunction and mobilization delays as evidence against timely U.S. intervention. Already, China’s leading government advisers have highlighted the practical obstacles to timely U.S. intervention, from defense-production bottlenecks exposed by the war in Ukraine to Washington’s reliance on allied bases and logistical support.

But precedent shows such readings can be dangerously incomplete. During the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis, Beijing reportedly interpreted Washington’s restrained response to earlier Chinese military exercises as evidence that the United States would limit itself to diplomatic protest. Instead, as tensions escalated, the Clinton administration sharply raised the stakes by deploying two carrier battle groups toward Taiwan, reportedly catching Beijing by surprise.

Those in Beijing who doubt Washington’s willingness to intervene may take further confidence from China’s growing military advantages close to home. But the broader warning still applies: familiar patterns of American restraint can become unreliable guides once a crisis changes the political stakes. If Beijing mistakes visible constraints on American power for a reliable forecast of U.S. behavior over Taiwan, it could overestimate how much room remains for coercion before provoking an unexpected response.

Information asymmetry leaves Washington at least as dependent on mind-reading. The search for a Chinese “timeline” on seizing Taiwan has become something of a cottage industry. Some assessments have focused on 2027, when Xi has instructed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to meet important modernization goals; others now look to Taiwan’s 2028 election cycle; still others have inferred a much longer horizon from Beijing’s linkage of unification with “national rejuvenation,” a goal associated with 2049. The proliferation of competing dates reveals how uncertain outsiders are about the logic that actually drives Beijing’s decisions on Taiwan.

That uncertainty naturally pushes Washington toward what it can observe. Chinese military activity around Taiwan offers an obvious proxy: the frequency and scale of drills and patrols are all being scrutinized for clues about Beijing’s intentions. Yet those signals are becoming harder, not easier, to interpret as China normalizes a higher tempo of military activity around the island. The same exercise can function at once as coercive signaling, contingency preparation, and rehearsal for operations Beijing may – or may not – someday choose to execute.

The result is an uncomfortable ambiguity. More intensive PLA activity does not necessarily signal a decision to use force, while routine activity may mask a meaningful change in intent. As once exceptional behavior becomes normalized, Washington risks misreading signals in both directions: seeing imminent action where there is only coercion, or dismissing a real shift in Beijing’s intentions as just another exercise.

The greater danger is that these two forms of misreading can reinforce each other in a crisis. If Beijing expects Washington to respond slowly, it may push coercion further in the belief that there is still room to maneuver. Washington, seeing a sharper escalation than expected, may interpret it as evidence that Beijing has already crossed a political threshold and respond more forcefully. That response, in turn, could convince Beijing that U.S. intervention is becoming imminent, narrowing the space for restraint on both sides.

The next crisis would leave little time to sort signal from intent. That is why sustained political and military communication – now beginning to regain momentum amid renewed high-level engagement between Xi and Trump – should be pursued even in the absence of deeper strategic trust, if only to strengthen deterrence and reduce the risk of miscalculation. Regular contact gives both sides a chance to explain what particular actions are meant to convey, learn how those actions are being received, and correct dangerous interpretations before they begin shaping the next move.

Beijing and Washington will continue to watch each other closely across the Taiwan Strait. They should also leave themselves a way to ask what they are actually seeing.

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Less than two weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s high-stakes visit to Washington, Beijing reportedly threatened to cancel the planned summit with U.S. President Donald Trump if the United States approved further arms sales to Taiwan. Despite the White House’s silence on arms sales, its top envoy to Taipei last week called securing peace in the Taiwan Strait “one of its top priorities” for the United States.

Beneath this routine exchange of rhetoric lies a persistent problem: For all the attention Beijing and Washington devote to Taiwan, sustained communication over the issue remains thin. With both sides heralding their own version of strategic ambiguity, much of what passes for communication instead takes place at arm’s length – through public statements, arms sales, military deployments, and exercises. Consequently, strategic mind-reading has become a routine part of the relationship.

But constant guessing can harden assumptions more than sharpen judgment, creating precisely the kind of miscalculation that pushes a crisis toward conflict. For all their differences, neither Beijing nor Washington is immune to the risk.

Beijing would seem to have an advantage in the mind-reading game. Unlike China, the United States exposes much of its internal friction in public: issues like defense spending, weapons stocks, and industrial buildout are openly debated and scrutinized. Washington’s apparent difficulty in mobilizing resources and coordinating allied efforts over Ukraine and Iran, set against increasingly fractured domestic politics, can easily be read as evidence of American power in decline. 

That perception has likely fed into Beijing’s calculations over Taiwan, where one of the hardest questions is not whether the United States has the capability to intervene, but whether it would do so quickly enough to shape the course of a crisis. Chinese strategists may therefore be tempted to treat signs of American political dysfunction and mobilization delays as evidence against timely U.S. intervention. Already, China’s leading government advisers have highlighted the practical obstacles to timely U.S. intervention, from defense-production bottlenecks exposed by the war in Ukraine to Washington’s reliance on allied bases and logistical support.

But precedent shows such readings can be dangerously incomplete. During the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis, Beijing reportedly interpreted Washington’s restrained response to earlier Chinese military exercises as evidence that the United States would limit itself to diplomatic protest. Instead, as tensions escalated, the Clinton administration sharply raised the stakes by deploying two carrier battle groups toward Taiwan, reportedly catching Beijing by surprise.

Those in Beijing who doubt Washington’s willingness to intervene may take further confidence from China’s growing military advantages close to home. But the broader warning still applies: familiar patterns of American restraint can become unreliable guides once a crisis changes the political stakes. If Beijing mistakes visible constraints on American power for a reliable forecast of U.S. behavior over Taiwan, it could overestimate how much room remains for coercion before provoking an unexpected response.

Information asymmetry leaves Washington at least as dependent on mind-reading. The search for a Chinese “timeline” on seizing Taiwan has become something of a cottage industry. Some assessments have focused on 2027, when Xi has instructed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to meet important modernization goals; others now look to Taiwan’s 2028 election cycle; still others have inferred a much longer horizon from Beijing’s linkage of unification with “national rejuvenation,” a goal associated with 2049. The proliferation of competing dates reveals how uncertain outsiders are about the logic that actually drives Beijing’s decisions on Taiwan.

That uncertainty naturally pushes Washington toward what it can observe. Chinese military activity around Taiwan offers an obvious proxy: the frequency and scale of drills and patrols are all being scrutinized for clues about Beijing’s intentions. Yet those signals are becoming harder, not easier, to interpret as China normalizes a higher tempo of military activity around the island. The same exercise can function at once as coercive signaling, contingency preparation, and rehearsal for operations Beijing may – or may not – someday choose to execute.

The result is an uncomfortable ambiguity. More intensive PLA activity does not necessarily signal a decision to use force, while routine activity may mask a meaningful change in intent. As once exceptional behavior becomes normalized, Washington risks misreading signals in both directions: seeing imminent action where there is only coercion, or dismissing a real shift in Beijing’s intentions as just another exercise.

The greater danger is that these two forms of misreading can reinforce each other in a crisis. If Beijing expects Washington to respond slowly, it may push coercion further in the belief that there is still room to maneuver. Washington, seeing a sharper escalation than expected, may interpret it as evidence that Beijing has already crossed a political threshold and respond more forcefully. That response, in turn, could convince Beijing that U.S. intervention is becoming imminent, narrowing the space for restraint on both sides.

The next crisis would leave little time to sort signal from intent. That is why sustained political and military communication – now beginning to regain momentum amid renewed high-level engagement between Xi and Trump – should be pursued even in the absence of deeper strategic trust, if only to strengthen deterrence and reduce the risk of miscalculation. Regular contact gives both sides a chance to explain what particular actions are meant to convey, learn how those actions are being received, and correct dangerous interpretations before they begin shaping the next move.

Beijing and Washington will continue to watch each other closely across the Taiwan Strait. They should also leave themselves a way to ask what they are actually seeing.

David Tingxuan Zhang is an analyst at Trivium China, where he advises governments, investors, and MNCs on China’s economic policymaking and business environment. The views expressed here are his own.

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Fonte: The Diplomat