Andrew Zeng, Stanford University -- Recent scholarship on the question of whether Taiwan will face an imminent invasion from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been divided into two diametrically opposing camps, with neither camp seemingly able to achieve a decisive advantage over the other. The problem stems largely from the fact that the Chinese political system is notoriously opaque; as a corollary, it is nigh impossible to extrapolate its intentions exclusively from its leaders’ speeches and public-facing communiques. So as Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders deny the statehood of Taiwan in increasingly provocative and aggressive terms, the central problem for American and Taiwanese policymakers is to deduce whether their statements are pretense or preparation.
