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January 10, 2025

Colloquium Topic: From Coercion to Capitulation: How China can Take Taiwan Without a War

Key Points to be discussed in this presentation:

• A plausible pathway exists for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to employ coercion on a mass scale to force the Republic of China government to accept Beijing’s demands without sparking a large regional war and without endangering the PRC’s global grand-strategic objectives.
• Too little attention is dedicated to the PRC’s coercion capabilities, while the PRC’s military capability to invade Taiwan remains the core focus of strategies to defend Taiwanese autonomy. 
• A short-of-war coercion campaign can generate conditions to provide the PRC with several avenues that could translate PRC coercive activities into political outcomes that enable the PRC to gain political control over Taiwan.  
• The US, Taiwan, and a global coalition of states are entirely capable of developing adequate countermeasures to deter and defeat a PRC coercion campaign targeting Taiwan through immediate action and close coordination.

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Colloquium Speaker: Daniel Blumenthal

Dan Blumenthal is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. Mr. Blumenthal has served in and advised the US government on China issues for more than a decade.

Before joining AEI, Mr. Blumenthal served as senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the US Department of Defense. He served as a commissioner on the congressionally mandated US-China Economic and Security Review Commission from 2006 to 2012, and he was vice chairman of the commission in 2007. He also served on the Academic Advisory Board of the congressional US-China Working Group.

Mr. Blumenthal is the author of “The China Nightmare: The Grand Ambitions of a Decaying State” (AEI Press, November 2020) and coauthor of “An Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century” (AEI Press, November 2012).

He has testified before Congress and has been published in The Atlantic, Commentary, Foreign Policy, The Hill, Los Angeles Times, The National Interest, National Review, The New York Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, RealClearWorld, and The Wall Street Journal, among other outlets. His broadcast appearances include C-SPAN, Yahoo News, Bloomberg Radio, and many top-rated talk radio programs.

Mr. Blumenthal has a JD from Duke Law School, an MA from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis. He also attended Capital Normal University in Beijing, China, where he focused on Chinese language studies.