Taipei sees the military balance in the Taiwan Strait tipping in Beijing's favour as early as next year, but believes China will not have the confidence to attack the self-ruled, democratic island for another five years.
Amid simmering tension over Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian's plan to hold the island's first ever referendum during presidential elections in March, Deputy Defence Minister Chong-Pin Lin said he was not ruling out conflict.
China sees the referendum as a provocative move by Taiwan towards independence and has threatened war, but Lin said the island could deal a bloody blow to invading Chinese troops.
He vowed Taiwan's 400,000-strong armed forces would fight back and Taiwan was preparing for a swift attack by the ever-modernising People's Liberation Army (PLA), the world's largest standing army at 2.5 million troops.
"The PLA may start to surpass what we have in 2005 or between 2005 and 2008," Lin, 61, told Reuters in an interview late on Friday at the defence ministry in Taipei.
But Lin said the military balance tipping in the mainland's favour - what he called a "crossover" - was unlikely to embolden mainland commanders completely.
"The simple fact of a crossover is insufficient to make the leaders in Beijing feel 100 percent confident in winning a war," said the former Taiwan policymaker on China.
The years "2010 to 2015 (will be) when the PLA will have such a supremacy in both qualitative and quantitative comparison of forces that it may feel confident to move", said Lin, whose late father was Taiwan's first air force commander-in-chief.
Lin did not directly address the controversy surrounding Chen's referendum, which is likely to call on China to dismantle almost 500 missiles aimed at Taiwan.
Rising tension has pushed US President George W. Bush to warn both sides not to change the political status quo.
Washington switched diplomatic ties to Beijing from Taipei in 1979, but is Taiwan's main arms supplier and trading partner.
While conceding that the PLA may be speaking in a "louder voice" in the wake of the planned referendum, Lin said China's civilian leadership was unlikely to unleash the military.
For China, Lin said, economic development was more important than unification. Alternatives to war included diplomatic isolation, increasing Taiwan's economic dependence on the mainland, and winning the hearts and minds of ordinary Taiwanese.
"The highest ideal of Beijing leaders is to achieve unification without fighting," he said. "Beijing's leaders consider it unwise to resort to the military option right now."
But Lin said Taiwan was not dismissing the possibility of war. "We cannot afford to be so complacent," he said.
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