Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to the United States said on a visit to Honolulu this week that there are longer-term threats to her country’s independence from China, and here-and-now threats.

Neither bodes well for the island democracy of nearly 24 million people that lies just across the narrow Taiwan Strait from its much more powerful claimant.

“There is a longer-term threat and that is, China hasn’t renounced the use of force to absorb Taiwan, and that is not a new threat. It’s been there for decades,” said Bi-khim Hsiao, formally the representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington D.C.

“But what we are facing right now is a series of what we call gray-zone threats, and that is short of a full-scale invasion, but coercive efforts to force Taiwan into submission,” Hsiao said in an interview with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “And these include close encounters in Taiwan’s airspace and sea lanes, intrusions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone and also in the nearby naval waters.”

The challenges from China also include cyberattacks, political warfare, political influence campaigns and operations within Taiwan, she said.

The issue of a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan “definitely is the most immediate driver” in Pentagon thinking “and the most dangerous potential scenario we face,” said retired Navy Capt. Carl Schuster, a Hawaii Pacific University adjunct professor.

Hsiao, who has to walk a fine line between generating support for a free Taiwan and incurring the wrath of China’s ruling Communist Party, was appointed to the key diplomatic post in July 2020.

The three-day visit to Hawaii through Thursday represented one of her first state visits outside of Washington, D.C., since assuming the role, she said.

The envoy was scheduled to give a keynote speech at the ongoing Pacific Forum U.S.-Taiwan Dialogue in Honolulu, which she said was focused on defense and deterrence.

“I think they originally intended to have over 40 of us in a room, but COVID has made it more complicated. But still, I appreciate the opportunity for meaningful discussion,” Hsiao said.

During the interview, Hsiao, daughter of a Taiwanese father and American mother, wore a yellow mask featuring animal caricatures and the words “Keep Taiwan Free.”

“For us it’s important that we’re able to engage with the American people,” the envoy said. The U.S.-Taiwanese relationship “is based on shared values and common interests and our values (of) freedom and democracy and our interest in the stability (and) peace of the region.”

China bristles at any hint of separatist or independence talk by Taiwan, with reunification one of its paramount goals. Using force to accomplish that looks increasingly likely. In April, Taiwanese Vice President Ching-te Lai emphasized that his country is a sovereign state and that China and Taiwan “are not affiliated with each other,” the Taiwan News reported.

Hsiao, however, said that “the threat picture is expanding.” Chinese military aircraft intrusions are a “near-daily phenomenon.”

“It is certainly alarming, and we have been compelled to respond with our own air defenses, but it’s a fact of life that we’re close to China, and it’s a threat that’s been around for four decades,” the ambassador said. “What we have to do, though, is to fortify our own defenses.”

Once China has the military power to solve its “Taiwan problem” and unification with the mainland, President Xi Jinping “could find it politically untenable not to do so,” Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, said in a July/August Foreign Affairs article.

The U.S. has provided billions in arms sales to Taiwan and moved closer in recent years to the isle nation, which is a democratic stronghold next to China.

“We will stand with friends and allies to advance our shared prosperity, security and values in the Indo-Pacific region — and that includes deepening our ties with democratic Taiwan,” U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said in January.

Hsiao was asked whether Taiwan would receive an invitation to be an observer for RIMPAC 2022 maritime exercises in Hawaii.

“I think this is a question the U.S. government will have to answer, but I think it’s important for Taiwan to be internationally engaged,” she said, adding, “The U.S. is our most important partner on defense and security.”

With threats from China increasing, “some degree of international coordination would help to deter further military action on (the) part of China.”

Taiwan’s potential participation in RIMPAC has “been a subject of discussions with our American friends.” Those talks have occurred “all along,” she said.

During the recent U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, “the Chinese have been propagating a narrative that the U.S. isn’t reliable” and is in decline, and “unfortunately, that narrative has its followers and advocates in Taiwan as well,” she said. “However, there is a very broad spectrum of discourse and debate in Taiwan, and the other side of the debate is the withdrawal does bring about more attention on the Indo-Pacific region in the long run, and the looming challenges that China poses.”

Taiwan is distinct from Afghanistan such that the “narrative the Chinese have been propagating doesn’t fit.”

She added that “we appreciate that a number of American officials” including President Joe Biden and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan “have all reiterated support for Taiwan.”

“I think our society has been reassured that the United States is committed to the region and will remain active in its support for Taiwan self-defense, but ultimately, we are responsible for our own self-defense as well,” she said, refining that a bit to “needing U.S. support — but we are responsible.”

The “unfortunate backslide” of democracy and basic rights under Chinese- controlled Hong Kong “has further fortified the public will or the determination to defend our democracy and our freedom,” Hsiao said.

The diplomat said Taiwan is in “no position to engage in an arms race with China, but we do have to be smart about our asymmetric defenses,” adding that means forces that are mobile, nimble, stealthy, harder to detect and in greater numbers “that would make any consideration of an actual invasion too painful.”

Mastro, writing in Foreign Affairs, said Beijing is preparing for four major campaigns to take Taiwan: missiles and airstrikes to disarm Taiwanese targets, a blockade of the island, missile and airstrikes on U.S. forces nearby, and an amphibious assault on Taiwan.

“Among defense experts there is little debate about China’s ability to pull off the first three of these campaigns,” Mastro said, but an amphibious assault “is far from guaranteed to succeed.”

Hsiao said the United States has approved the sale of a coastal defense cruise missile to Taiwan “that’s not a new high-end system. However, it does serve the purpose of making an amphibious landing or an invasion attack extremely painful.”

She didn’t specify the system, but Taiwan sought 100 truck launchers and 400 U.S. Navy Harpoon anti-ship missiles. Taiwan’s defense minister more recently discussed the possible purchase of AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles that can be fitted to its F-16 fighters and have a range of more than 600 miles.

Ralph Cossa, president emeritus and WSD-Handa chairman at the Pacific Forum, noted that there are “lots of different views on how immediate a threat” China poses to Taiwan.

“I don’t think (the) Chinese are ready to do it today, and even if they were, it would undermine a lot of Xi’s other plans for building the country and party,” he said.

“Certainly, we need to take the threat seriously and acknowledge it is growing and (the) Chinese are becoming more aggressive, but this does not mean China has either the capability today or the intent to try to reunite Taiwan by force,” Cossa said. “I think Beijing is more worried about deterring Taiwan from declaring independence — which would then compel it to act — than it is about forcing reunification.”

Singapore used to — and might still — prescribe to a “poison shrimp” philosophy, he said.

“They know they were small, but they made themselves combat-capable enough to convince their neighbors that the cost/ indigestion they would experience was not worth the benefits. Taiwan needs to do the same thing,” Cossa said.