A leading US expert on the Chinese military says that by 2020, Beijing could have 2,000 or more missiles, nearly 1,000 modern combat aircraft, 60 modern submarines and a potential invasion force of many hundreds of thousands of troops “pointed at Taiwan.”

Richard Fisher, a senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center near Washington, warned in an article in the Wall Street Journal that the US “should be under no illusion about Beijing’s motives.”

He says that while President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has made historic progress in defusing tensions with China, Beijing has signaled that it wants to end Taiwan’s democratic era.