Changes in geopolitical power dynamics and growing unease in Washington because of a rising China is once again pushing the world into another cold war. Amidst the rising Sino-US rivalry, Taiwan finds itself in the middle of a Cold war-style superpower confrontation. China is ramping up its diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan in its bid towards reunification and reaching out to its Pacific neighbours, thus slowly pushing out American influence from the region. President Xi Jinping has made Taiwan question a central pillar of his Chinese vision. Growing assertiveness from China on the other hand is stressing the USA into getting involved in the region with more military equipment and increased military and diplomatic collaboration with its Pacific partners for containing Beijing. Beijing is growing with confidence in overpowering obstacles in Taiwan straits; Taipei is continually refusing to adhere to Chinese terms and reaching out to Washington, Washington is rolling back its One China policy enacted back in 1978, thus turning the Taiwan Straits into a tinderbox. Council on Foreign Relations, an influential think tank from the USA has already put a potential military standoff involving the USA and China over Taiwan Straits as a tier-one risk in its Preventive Priorities Survey this year, which is used to track the most dangerous geopolitical flashpoints around the world. Rapid advancements of the defence capabilities of China have changed the balance of power in the straits, raising the risk of an inadvertent great power conflict in the region.
In a display of mustering international support, the USA is encouraging naval show of force from faraway allies like UK, France, and Germany in waters around Taiwan. With an already raging trade and tech war between China and the USA and allies, such moves only add to the list of distrust and anxiety of China, which has over the years taken any of the US move to challenge Chinese prowess seriously. China feels intimidated by the recent move from the USA’s behalf in forming Quad, a bloc consisting of USA, Japan, Australia and India. Bolstering the military capabilities of the USA and allies in the region encircling China only enrages Beijing and threatens to blow away the status quo of the Taiwan straits.
The first appearance of Taiwan in official Chinese records was observed in 239 AD when China sent an expeditionary force to the island to conquer it. With a brief Dutch colonial rule, the island was under imperial Chinese control, until Japan occupied it in 1895. After the defeat in Second World War, Japan relinquished the control of Taiwan at the hands of a nationalist Chinese government, which received support from the USA and UK. Few years after the Second World War, a civil war in China, which was already brewing since the 1930s, reached its climax and the Communists led by Chairman Mao Tse Tung took the control of mainland China. The nationalists led by the then Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan in 1949 and set up a republic, and named it the Republic of China, under the protection of its Western allies. Since then, Taiwan shares its stories of hostilities with mainland China.
Hostilities relatively lessened with the beginning of the 1980s. China put forward the “one country, two systems” formula for Taiwan, allowing greater autonomy for it, should Taiwan embrace reunification with the mainland. Although Taiwan rejected the offer, the nationalist Kuo Min Tang (KMT) government relaxed many rules for trade and investments. It also declared the end of war with the mainland in 1991. China and Taiwan maintained indirect contacts as Beijing refused to bestow legitimacy on the government of Taipei. Beijing was alarmed at the rise of Chen Shui-bian in the presidency of Taiwan in 2000, who was a leader from the pro-independence party called Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The fundamental difference between DPP and KMT is KMT favours eventual reunification with the mainland despite differences with Communist ideology, while DPP roots for formal independence. He was succeeded by Ma Ying-jeou from KMT in 2008, who sought to improve ties with China through economic agreements after taking office. After 8 years, the situation again moved downhill, when current leader Tsai Ing-wen from DPP came into power.
In 1978, USA enacted a principle to agree that there is only one China, despite guaranteeing autonomy of Taiwan since the 1950s. Despite the unofficial relations between Taiwan and USA, China always had in mind that a peaceful reunification is possible and it prevented conflict in the region. The uneasy status quo was challenged during the reign of Trump administration, and the momentum has been kept by the current Biden administration. Suring the summer of 2020, the Democrats quietly removed the “One China” phrase from its platform and during the Presidential inauguration in January 2021, Biden became the first US President to host a Taiwanese envoy at the inauguration. In April, USA began easing all the limitations that barred any official USA and Taiwan contacts.
These policies are only raising the spectre of catastrophic conflict. The more Taiwan and the USA move closer, the bigger the risk of a Chinese move to make reunification by force. In 2005, China formulated a law that enables Beijing to declare war should Taiwan declare independence. The recent American departure from “One China” policy was received by China through numerous military drills and the show of force in the Taiwan Straits. When China swiftly tamed the pro-democracy protests and wrested strong control in Hong Kong, the Western policymakers shifted their onus to Taiwan, assuming it to be the next in the line of fire of China.
Territorial integrity has always been the top priority in Beijing. Communist China has seen Taiwan as a rebellious province since the beginning. Back in 1971 when US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met with Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai, the USA had several issues to discuss, exploiting the Sino-Soviet split to pressurize the Soviet Union, raging conflicts of Vietnam and in South Asia, which later culminated in independent Bangladesh. Zhou’s response was only one: Taiwan. He remarked, “If this crucial question is not solved, then the whole question [of U.S.-China relations] will be difficult to resolve.” Later on, in the subsequent China-USA meetings, Taiwan remained at the top. No matter what other issues the USA raised, be it Vietnam, Korea or the Soviet Union, China always returned the discussion to Taiwan. Chinese adamancy pushed the USA to severe formal ties with Taiwan and saw Taiwan getting expelled from the UN in 1971.
Fast forward to 2021, Taiwan still remains Beijing’s number one priority. It desires to take the island by force if peaceful means fail. When the talk of force comes, the USA also joins the picture. Washington’s support and military power have historically ensured Taiwan’s security by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. It states that the U.S. will consider “any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.” The act also binds the U.S. government to “make available to Taiwan such defence articles and… services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defence capacity,” as well as to “maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”
Strategic ambiguity, the official USA doctrine on Taiwan, however, does not elaborate USA’s plan on responding to the threats against Taiwan. China has swiftly advanced in the field of military technology when it was experiencing stupendous economic growth. The distance of the Chinese mainland from Taiwan is far less than the nearest US base in the Pacific. China operates 39 airbases within 500 miles of the island, where the USA has 2. Thus in order to respond to any military situation around Taiwan, USA will have to rely on its naval fleets and carrier strike groups. China has developed an arsenal of advanced anti-ship missiles called carrier killer missiles, which in the event of a full-blown military conflict can effectively dismantle US carrier strike groups in the Pacific. China also boasts an arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear payload, which will target and overrun US bases in South Korea, Guam and Japan.
Chinese capacity of outmanoeuvring US military capacities in the Pacific theatre thus makes it necessary for the USA to seek support of its other allies in the region. An effort of countering a major world power like China through blocs and coalition does not remain a one-way affair. Australia, one of the four members of the Quad bloc is already feeling the pinch of such a standoff in the economic sphere. Australia already lost billions of US dollars in trade with China with major falls in exports to the Asian giant. This event might serve as a Chinese lesson to other Pacific countries that massively depend on Chinese trade but prefer to accept Washington’s point of view on China. Top tier European economies that are slowly losing their positions to emerging Asian and South American economies and desperately trying to keep their economies stable by relying on trade with China, have to ponder whether poking the Chinese dragon in the underbelly by sending in ships be a pleasant idea.
China has expanded its naval fleet to match a combined fleet of challengers in the Pacific and increasingly flies sorties over the sky that is claimed by Taiwan. These events might underscore an advent of Chinese aggressiveness, but does not pinpoint the urgency to take over Taiwan by force. Since the modern borders have been drawn, China has rarely shown aggressive intent to take land by force, despite getting involved in the war in the Korean peninsula and a brief border war with India. China relies on expanding its influence over other countries by trade and offering support for infrastructure developments.
The rise of Chinese influence around the globe has become a dilemma for the USA. With no end in sight for a trade war and a tech war, sanctions making understatements when countering great powers, Washington will be tempted to make a bold statement. The stakes are high for the American empire. Even a well-calculated military manoeuvre in favour of Taiwan can ignite a Cuban missile crisis like scenario in the Pacific. But a push from American war hawks for short-term limited military adventure to upend any Chinese move to take Taiwan will cause a serious misadventure. Any frontal clash between the USA and China will not stay limited alone in the Taiwan Straits but will drag the whole Pacific theatre into a giant sinkhole and end in a catastrophic end of the era of American dominance. Taiwan will only find itself in the middle of a hammer and an anvil.
Neither China, Taiwan nor the USA would want such a conflict of such a cataclysmic scale, but each will continue to test the uneasy status quo.
Written by: Khalid Ibn Muneer
English (United States) 
English (UK)