As China is increasing its belligerence and aggression vis-à-vis Taiwan, the international community continues to focus its attention on the material dimension of confrontation. Pundits scrutinize the number of Chinese military aircraft and naval vessels operating around Taiwan, and much ink is spilled on Beijing’s efforts to modernize People’s Liberation Army (PLA) capabilities in physical domains of warfare. Yet, it is crucial to highlight that China seeks to “advance towards the center of the world stage” (走進世界舞臺中央) through non-kinetic means. Beijing’s lawfare campaign, which includes deliberate efforts to distort the United Nations (UN) Resolution 2758, is an illustrative component of the regime’s political warfare, which U.S. diplomat George Kennan described as “the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives.”
Within the Chinese party-state, the PLA is not a genuine national military under the control of the state but rather the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which defines protecting the party’s rule and defending the party’s interests as its core objectives. Consequently, analyzing the PLA’s nonmaterial power projection capabilities, manifested in its political warfare, remains critical for understanding the Chinese strategy.
The PLA’s most developed doctrinal and operational framework of political warfare is the “Three Warfares”— psychological, public opinion, and legal—which were known to be first formulated in the 2003 “Political Work Guidelines of the People’s Liberation Army.” Concerning Taiwan, realizing the strategy of the “Three Warfares” could allow Beijing to annex the democratic island nation without firing a single bullet. Notably, through legal warfare – or lawfare – Beijing is actively preparing the legal environment for a potential escalation in the Taiwan Strait and invasion of Taiwan.
The PLA’s legal warfare consists of Beijing’s efforts to construct legal and pseudo-legal arguments to redefine legality and legitimacy. In other words, the PLA uses (and misuses) the law, including its domestic legislation and the international legal system, to delegitimize adversaries and legitimize its own behaviors. In the context of cross-strait tensions, some of the tools of lawfare deployed by Beijing include its 2005 Anti-Secession Law, the 22-point set of guidelines to punish “die-hard” Taiwanese independence separatists, published in June 2024, the deliberate conflation of its one-China principle with one China policies of other nations – including Central Eastern European countries such as Czechia, and, last but not least, the manipulation of UN Resolution 2758 meaning to legitimize its claims over Taiwan in the international arena.
The UN Resolution 2758, adopted on October 25, 1971, transferred the Chinese seat at the United Nations from the Taipei-based Republic of China (ROC) government to the Beijing-based authorities of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). While the resolution granted the PRC the status of the sole representative of China in the UN, it does not discuss Taiwan’s status – notably, the word “Taiwan” does not even appear in the document. At the same, Beijing is actively distorting the meaning of the resolution, asserting that it provides a basis for its sovereignty claims over Taiwan and justifies Taiwan’s exclusion from international organizations. In reality, the document only addresses the issue of China’s representation within the UN system. It does not resolve the international legal question of Taiwan’s status.
These efforts to distort the meaning of the UN Resolution 2758 constitute a tool of China’s lawfare as Beijing actively seeks to misuse the document to secure international acceptance of its version of the “One China” principle under customary international law. Referring to the resolution, the PRC’s August 2022 white paper on Taiwan, “The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era,” claims, “Resolution 2758 is a political document encapsulating the one-China principle whose legal authority leaves no room for doubt and has been acknowledged worldwide.” Beijing’s “one China” principle stipulates that “there is but one China in the world, Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China.” Yet, China’s claims that the UN Resolution 2758 constitutes the basis of its “one China” principle are entirely unfounded. The document does not purport to regulate Taiwan’s international status, its ability to participate in the works of international organizations in any capacity or whether Taiwan is a part of the PRC. Any such language is simply not present in the resolution.
Despite China’s claims, its “one China” principle formulation is not universally accepted under customary international law. Instead, many states worldwide, including Czechia, have formulated their own “one China” policies, which can adapt and change to adjust to the evolving context of cross-strait relations. Chong Ja Ian of Carnegie China enumerates ten categories of positions that states around the world have taken on the issue of “one China,” demonstrating the complexity of the issue and demonstrating that Beijing’s diktats on this subject are not universally accepted. Consequently, in the efforts to counteract China’s lawfare, it is imperative to challenge the myth of consensus over the question of “one China” and clearly distinguish between China’s “One China” principle and other countries’ definitions of their “one China” policies.
In recognition of the PLA’s lawfare efforts, which include distortion of the UN Resolution 2758, democratic countries began to devise defensive strategies to uphold the rule of law and preserve international peace and security. The “Counter-Lawfare” initiative of the United States Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) is a laudable example. By building legitimacy through consensus and denying potential adversaries from gaining legal superiority, the initiative support integrated deterrence against instrumentalization and distortion of legal instruments as tools of non-kinetic warfare. Maintaining peace and stability around Taiwan is a core strategic interest of democratic countries – as recently reaffirmed by the EU. As the PLA, the armed wing of the CCP, resorts to political warfare to realize Beijing’s hegemonic ambitions, it is imperative that democratic partners work together to expose and deter the PRC’s disruptive non-kinetic campaigns such as the efforts to corrupt the meaning of the UN Resolution 2758.
