The strategic importance of Taiwan
Should China take control of Taiwan it would represent a breach of the Western Pacific strategic line the US holds from South Korea to Japan through Okinawa to the Philippines. Although the US no longer has military forces on Taiwan, it counts Taiwan as a staunch ally and sells military equipment, including F16s, to Taiwan.
This would enable China to more easily project power, both military and economic, throughout Southwest Asia and the western Pacific. Japan would almost certainly feel more threatened, thus remilitarizing. Japan and China have fought multiple wars over the last centuries. With that history it is likely that we would see greater instability in Asia.
© William L. Enyart 2022
Email: bill@billenyart.com
Audio production by Tom Calhoun, paguytom.com
The strategic importance of Taiwan
Since the Ukraine-Russia war broke out in February, I’ve been making regular appearances on news programming on cable tv channel News Nation, formerly WGN America. My interviews began with commentary on Ukraine but, with the ratcheting of tension between China and the US have grown to include Taiwan.
A law school classmate and good friend, who occasionally catches me on tv, asked me to explain the geostrategic importance of Taiwan on the news show. Now my friend is probably the smartest person I know. He’s an engineer and a patent lawyer and once worked for a Chinese tech company. So, when he asks I know it’s important.
The problem with his request is the time constraint I face on a cable tv news program. Even with the relatively generous time News Nation allots me, I’m competing with forest fires, mass shootings, presidential pronouncements and cancelled space launches. I usually get two to four minutes to discuss the latest military/foreign policy crisis. That’s about two to four hundred words or a page to a page and a half. Nowhere near enough time to explain the complexities of China-US-Taiwan.
The seven to ten minutes I usually allocate for this podcast isn’t near enough either, but let’s give it a shot.
First one must understand the geography. Taiwan sits just over a hundred miles off the coast of China. North of the Philippines and south of Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan. It’s location dominates the sea lanes through which thirty per cent of all the world’s commercial ocean shipping passes. A huge portion of China’s trade passes by ship through this area, as does significant portions of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan’s trade. Were China to control Taiwan it would control those sea lanes.
Taiwan’s long and complicated history includes Chinese immigration, Dutch and Spanish colonial control and Japanese attempts at invasion. Post-European colonialism, China controlled Taiwan until 1895, when the Japanese won control. The Japanese used Taiwan as a base for Word War II invasions. After World War II Taiwan was returned to Chinese control.
In 1949 the Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Tse-tung and the Communists. The Nationalists evacuated to Taiwan and have held it since. That’s six hundred years of history in two paragraphs.
The Chinese government periodically escalated tensions over Taiwan in the 1950’s and ‘60’s, but Taiwan was legally recognized as the legitimate government of all of China, not the Communist regime. That ended with President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who opened up trade with mainland China and recognized its government, leading to the United Nations replacing the Nationalist government with the Communist government as the recognized government of mainland China.
With the opening of trade China has grown to the second largest economy in the world and a prime trading partner with the US. The US suffers a huge trade imbalance with China buying about two and a half times as much from China as it buys from the US.
US companies took advantage of cheap Chinese labor by moving manufacturing from the United States to China which fueled Chinese economic growth. Today General Motors sells more Buicks in China than it does in the US.
During that same period Taiwan has also experienced terrific economic growth. An example of this is that Taiwan currently manufactures ninety per cent of the world semiconductors. Those little bits that control so much of what all our devices do, whether it’s cars, computers or controllers.
Should China take control of Taiwan it would represent a breach of the Western Pacific strategic line the US holds from South Korea to Japan through Okinawa to the Philippines. Although the US no longer has military forces on Taiwan, it counts Taiwan as a staunch ally and sells military equipment, including F16s, to Taiwan.
This would enable China to more easily project power, both military and economic, throughout Southwest Asia and the western Pacific. Japan would almost certainly feel more threatened, thus remilitarizing. Japan and China have fought multiple wars over the last centuries. With that history it is likely that we would see greater instability in Asia.
Taiwan is today a vibrant democracy. Based on what we have seen the Chinese government do to the democracy that existed in Hong Kong, when it was a British protectorate, and what it has done to the Uighers as well as to Tibet, it is safe to assume the same would happen to Taiwan.
So there’s you primer, not a dissertation, but a primer on why Taiwan is so strategically important not only to the US but also to China and the rest of the world.
© William L. Enyart 2022
www.billenyart.com Email: bill@billenyart.com
Audio production by Tom Calhoun, www.paguytom.com