'The stakes of a conflict over Taiwan are of an entirely different category than any of the wars of choice the United States has involved itself in this century.' Photo SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty.

It’s still before dawn when hundreds of Chinese missiles begin to rain down on Taiwan. Much of the self-governing island’s air and naval forces are obliterated in a matter of minutes. Chinese special forces storm the residence and offices of the Taiwanese president, executing the “decapitation strike” they’ve trained for years to carry out. Swarms of aircraft and drones pound Taiwanese defences, as up to 50,000 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) paratroopers descend on the island, attempting a blitz assault to capture landing zones for a helicopter-borne second wave before making a drive for the beaches.
Hundreds of thousands of PLA troops are about to make landfall in the largest amphibious operation since D-Day. The long-anticipated invasion of Taiwan has begun.
In Washington, the President is presented with an urgent and daunting decision. Extensive wargames have repeatedly indicated that Taiwan’s only hope for survival is for US military forces to intervene immediately and decisively, blasting much of the PLA invasion force out of the water while they are still exposed and vulnerable. Hesitation, they have learned, always leads to a grinding war of attrition that Taiwan is destined to lose. Indo-Pacific Command urges the President to unleash its “Hellscape” plan: using swarms of drones, anti-ship missiles, and attack submarines to temporarily turn the Taiwan Strait into a watery no man’s land, buying time for American reinforcements to arrive. But there is no way around the obvious reality: this will mean war between the world’s two largest nuclear-armed superpowers.
Moreover, the commanders of US air and space forces insist they be authorised to immediately attack China’s “kill chain”, the network of satellites, sensors, and command, communication, and control centres that allow long-range weapons to find and accurately hit targets. Both sides have a huge incentive to strike first, before the other does: leaving them effectively blinded. American military satellites, in particular, are invaluable, irreplaceable, and sitting ducks. The President knows his counterpart in Beijing is weighing up the same decision. But there’s a big problem: not only are many of these systems on the Chinese mainland, they’re often the same ones used to target nuclear weapons; destroying them could be interpreted as the prelude to nuclear attack — in which case the incentive becomes to “launch ‘em or lose ‘em”. The situation is already escalating out of control.
Meanwhile, China’s leader has already hesitated: he has declined to open his gambit with a Pearl Harbor-like attack on vulnerable US bases and carrier groups around the Pacific, hoping Washington may yet back down and surrender Taiwan without a fight. But he has resolved that if the US does intervene, he will immediately sign off on massive strikes against not only American forces but also the allied Japanese, South Korean, and Philippine ones as well. Russia and North Korea are awaiting a green light to play roles of their own. Suddenly, the world teeters on the edge of World War III.
***
Though this scenario is fiction, for now, the chance of a major conflict over Taiwan in the not-so-distant future is real, and growing. Xi Jinping has declared in no uncertain terms that the reunification of Taiwan with mainland China is not only essential but the very “essence” of the leader’s epochal vision for the “great rejuvenation” — making China great again by reestablishing it as the world’s number one superpower. For Xi and the Chinese Communist Party, the island democracy of 24 million people is already their territory, separated from them only by Western imperial meddling. Its return to their control is non-negotiable. As Xi thundered in a major speech in 2022, “The wheels of history are rolling on toward China’s reunification and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Complete reunification of our country must be realised, and it can, without doubt, be realised.”
Xi has assigned specific dates to this goal. He has declared that reunification must be achieved no later than 2049, the centenary of the People’s Republic of China, but has also named 2035 as the date when China’s rejuvenation should be “basically realised”. Given that in 2035 Xi will likely still be in power, albeit aged 82, and that retaking Taiwan would be the nationalistic triumph to cement his political legacy in China, this appears to be his real deadline. That makes him a man in a hurry, and so he has ordered China’s military to complete its modernisation programme and be ready to “fight and win” a major war over Taiwan with a peer competitor (like the United States) by 2027.
Still, Xi would clearly much prefer to take Taiwan without fighting, if at all possible. China faces numerous internal challenges — including a slowing economy, a demographic crisis, widespread corruption, and social instability. And Xi seems to have prioritised these issues over external threats (to limited success). More important, though, is the fact that war is always an inherently unpredictable and risky business, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated for analysts in Beijing. An invasion of Taiwan would be a risk of far greater magnitude, with the penalty for failure likely to be, at a minimum, the economic devastation of China, the political delegitimisation of the CCP regime, and the end of Xi Jinping.
There is another reason for Beijing’s hesitation. It has long believed that the United States and the broader West is in terminal decline, that time is thus on China’s side, and that it can simply wait until American power collapses of its own accord. As a recent Heritage Foundation report details, “observation and assessment of Western civilisational strength or decline helps to shape almost every aspect of China’s policies, both foreign and domestic”. And it has paid close attention to the West’s “culture war” in particular. Viewing progressive “Left-liberal ideas as profoundly corrosive and destabilising”, the CCP has concluded that “the West’s will and ability to put up a fight are degrading over time”, and that “if it remains on its present course, the West could even withdraw from the world stage, collapse, or split apart”. As long as China believes this, it has no logical reason to ever bother fighting the United States over Taiwan at all.
Yet this conclusion is precisely why we may now be entering a period of particular danger. Should Beijing assess that, under the Trump administration, America is successfully reversing its decline and entering an era of cultural, economic, technological, and military revitalisation, then its strategic calculus is liable to flip. Like Imperial Japan, which before Pearl Harbor became obsessed by the motto “if the sun is not rising, it is setting”, China might conclude that its window of opportunity could be lost. In that case, China’s incentives would suddenly invert: it would seem advantageous to attack sooner rather than later, before its relative strength vis-à-vis the United States declined.
This danger is accentuated by the fact that China currently has a number of significant advantages in a war over Taiwan. In fact, the United States has “had its ass handed to it for years” in most wargames, as David Ochmanek, a senior RAND Corporation analyst and former deputy assistant secretary of defence, memorably put it. In particular, China possesses huge material advantages, including massive stockpiles of anti-ship missiles that can strike US surface ships from long range. Meanwhile America would run out of critical munitions within an estimated three to seven days and be unable to replace them, given that it currently takes its manufacturers nearly two years to produce a single cruise missile.
In general, a lack of domestic manufacturing capacity is the West’s most damning weakness when it comes to modern warfare. Even after three years of war in Ukraine, the United States and Europe combined still cannot match the capacity of Russia to manufacture basic munitions like artillery shells. Russia currently produces some three million shells per year, compared with 1.2 million by the US and EU together.
Unlike during the Second World War, today the United States is no arsenal of democracy. As it stands, were it to find itself in an extended war of attrition with China, an industrial titan which manufacturers a full 29% of the world’s goods, the US appears likely to find itself at a shocking disadvantage. For one thing, China maintains an astonishing 232 times the shipbuilding capacity of the US, as a leaked slide from an Office of Naval Intelligence briefing starkly exposed in 2023. China already possesses the world’s largest navy, with more than 370 vessels, compared with the US Navy’s 296.
All of which is to say that, if the CCP comes to believe that the Trump administration will succeed in its stated goal of revitalising America’s fortunes, then it may see the near future as the best time to challenge it over Taiwan. Although that is likely to begin with a series of intermediate steps designed to test US resolve, such as a blockade of the island, rather than a full-scale invasion, intentional or unintentional escalation is not out of the question.
The situation is not hopeless, however. The United States and Taiwan don’t need to be able to dominate China militarily to prevent a war; they merely need to make an attack on the island appear so exceptionally costly to China that it never dares pull the trigger. This is what Elbridge Colby, Trump’s nominee for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, calls a “strategy of denial”, and it can be accomplished by focusing squarely on mass-producing and deploying asymmetric weapons such as drones, missiles, and sea mines to turn Taiwan into a veritable porcupine.
This plan is sensibly straightforward, yet still somehow manages to rankle much of Washington, including people within the conservative coalition. On the one hand, it offends the hawkish neoconservative remnant of the Republican Party, because, as Colby has explained, taking Taiwan’s defence seriously — along with the reality of China’s strength and America’s limits — will necessarily mean prioritising Asia, requiring allies in Europe and the Middle East to provide more for their own defence instead of attempting to police the entire world ourselves.
Moreover, a focused strategy of asymmetric denial would mean reorienting billions of defence dollars currently being wastefully spent on those items most beloved by defence contractors and lobbyists: flashy big-ticket machines, such as aircraft carriers — which also happen to already be militarily obsolete. Like the battleships of old, these weapons are relics of a more ostentatious age, kept alive by Congressional pork politics, not military necessity. Finally, the strategy flies in the face of the Republican old guard’s neoliberal free-trade and free-market pieties, given that it will require a concerted, state-backed industrial and trade policy designed to quickly maximise American domestic manufacturing and rein in insecure globe-spanning supply chains.
On the other hand, the idea of defending Taiwan also causes a portion of the more non-interventionist MAGA base to bristle. Why, they ask, should America ever waste its blood and treasure to fight for an island on the other side of the world? This is a good question, but it has a good answer.
The stakes of a conflict over Taiwan are of an entirely different category than any of the wars of choice the United States has involved itself in this century. Although little Taiwan is a democracy facing down an authoritarian great power, defending an abstract ideal like democracy is not the real reason for the United States to intervene over Taiwan. Rather, the blunt truth is that if the United States fails to protect Taiwan (as it has done since 1949), this would, more than any other geopolitical catastrophe, demolish our credibility as a security provider, conclusively mark the decisive moment China achieved hegemony as the world’s new dominant superpower, and lead to the rapid collapse of the web of alliances and institutions charitably known as the “liberal international order” and less charitably as the American Empire.
And while many on the populist Right, myself included, are deeply sceptical of America’s sprawling empire and the vast costs of maintaining it, its sudden collapse would have swift and devastating consequences for the American nation at home. For one thing, our economy today is utterly dependent on running both a massive trade deficit of imports and gargantuan federal debts. The former depends on the latter, and both are completely dependent on the US Dollar maintaining its “exorbitant privilege” as the world’s reserve currency — a status it retains essentially only because the United States is the world’s top dog. A clear victory by China over Taiwan would end that privilege, with the world quickly reordering itself for a Chinese century. In the defeated United States, the result would be a simultaneous debt, financial, and economic crisis of a magnitude that would make the Great Depression seem mild. Americans’ standard of living might never recover.
The case for defending Taiwan is, therefore, firmly a matter of America’s national interest, not idealism. And to do so would be to maintain peace through strength — to avoid war through deterrence — not to seek forever wars abroad. The Trump administration should be prepared to make that case. Moreover, in so doing it can point out that all the steps necessary (bringing industry home, disciplining defence procurement, restoring military competence, and pushing allies to do more for their own defence) are fully in line with a broader America First agenda. This rearmament would be a campaign of nation-building at home, not abroad.
Still, even if political unity on the issue can be achieved, the Taiwan problem promises to be among the most pressing and consequential challenges President Trump faces throughout his second term. Taiwan lies at the centre of the emerging new cold war between China and the United States, and the intensifying risk of that clash going hot is already reshaping the world. The looming spectre of war over the island marks the end of one era — decades of naïve “end of history” idealism, unthinking globalisation, and heedless military adventurism — and the beginning of a new age of renewed realism among nations. To deal with the next decade of acute peril, the United States will need to develop a new foreign policy to match, one that combines realism and resolve in equal measure.
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SubscribeLet’s hope that someone in China has read Fritz Fischer’s “Griff nach der Weltmacht”, which describes Imperial Germany’s choice of war to solve its foreign policy dilemma. The plan miscarried horribly.
Choosing war is never the choice of careful and cautious leaders. Is Xi as reckless as Wilhelm II? Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.
The population of Taiwan is 1.7% of mainland China, and poses no military threat. A small but important de facto province given the amountof cross investment. Let the wise heads prevail.
Why does United States need Taiwan? The situation has changed, American needs to regroup and reorganize its global outreach is Taiwan still in its orbit? Just let’s avoid “democracy” talk in the post liberal world reality.
Really good article, particularly in the way it outlines the imperative to defend. No great of fan ex-VP Mike Pence but yesterday he conveyed another cogent argument – that a failure to defend will encourage nuclear proliferation in others. That can be applied as much to why what happens to Ukraine sends a message to others. And who does not think Kim Wrong Un wouldn’t sell nuclear knowledge to others if they came calling in urgent need.
Of course an appeal to values and ideals is also important alongside hard nosed realpolitik. If 2000 years ago the saying was ‘civis Romanus sum’ and in June 63 the proudest boast was Ich bin ein Berliner’, will soon a POTUS say 我是台湾人 ?
There is much wrong with the Orange One but as he grasps, like all 2nd termers that Foreign policy gives a POTUS more opportunities for historical legacy just perhaps we see something to properly respect. And as he gets frustrated with his home agenda this attraction will grow.
Finally back to the military calculus – you’d suspect Blockade tests of western resolve come first and that in itself would plunge the world economy into recession. The volume of trade that flows through the South China Sea makes the disruption in the Gulf of Aden the Houthis can cause look like a pinprick. That recession would hit Xi the hardest though. How long could he sustain it will be something that has been war-gamed too.
“Taiwan lies at the centre of the emerging new cold war between China and the United States”
The NeoCons don’t care about the independence of the people in Taiwan. They just like using the fact that anyone in China’s sphere might create problems for them, and so they want to arm up and “democracy” up that place in order to weaken a peer rival. That’s all this is about. Other than the fact that Taiwan supposedly has super duper chip making tech, but China is rapidly catching up to all of that, so the NeoCon excuses are starting to disappear.
Perhaps this will help, just think of Taiwan’s relationship to China as if it were Canada, Greenland, or Panama to the US, and pretend like they say that US meddling in Taiwan is a national security threat to them.
Chances are pretty decent that China will omplode on its corruption and economic folly before a war. If China chooe war the 3 river gorges dam bombing will certainly help the collapse. Taiwan was never part of China. China can go eff themselves.
14 down votes. Lots of apparatchiks voting today.
Any attack on island Taiwan will inevitably kill millions of ‘chinese ‘inhabitants.How would this go down with mainland chinese,many of whom have relatives on Taiwan
Your “War of the worlds” gambit is cheap and hackneyed. Take another approach to your writing. This is puerile.
I don’t think so. The Chinese will not invade Taiwan because they are fascists (blood and soil). They seek an anschluss by threats and cajoling.
To them the Taiwanese are ‘Chinese’ and the soil part of China.
They will only invade when they are pretty sure most of the Taiwanese will accept it (whether through fear, resignation or hope)
China and the West seem interdependent under the current world order. China’s manufacturers invest their profits back into US bonds and other assets. So both Western and Chinese elites would not like to see a big conflict. When the CCP does decide to sideline their elites, I’d say it would end this order and a lot of paper wealth would evaporate. However, at that point China still has working factories, what does the West have?
Similarly, when the US and the West want to re-industrialize (for a major war) the current globalized and financialized order cannot survive either. Just as during and directly after Word War II, economic elites will lose a lot of their wealth. This is because the focus of the state will be redirected to industrial output and away from what it doing now: protecting the asset bubbles of crony elites, while pretending to uphold free-market values.
One of the best authors of UnHerd. I hope to continue reading more of Mr Lyons’ articles here.
In my view, whatever of significance is happening in the world, the first question we should ask is, “Is China behind it?”. The answer might not always be a resounding “Yes”, but asking this question every single time is imperative.
Excellent article
Let’s look at the situation from a neutral perspective – the US is losing its “exorbitant privilege”. This is a slow but essentially irreversible process, since simple demographics and economic development in Asia are shifting. Asian economic development itself was promoted by the US’ post-WW II policies of trade, investment, and liberalisation, no doubt a resounding success and positive achievement.
So the choice for the US is to get its house in order while it still benefits from its exorbitant privilege. This can only be done through a massive retrenchment in its military bloat and adventurism. The alternative is to stay on course to the inevitable crash.
So the US too is facing a closing window – it will never again be as relatively powerful as it is now, at least in its ability to project power.
The war in Ukraine was a Schlieffen-Plan like attempt by the US to take Russia out of the equation and leave an isolated China as the US’ sole opponent. Like the WW I German cunning plan to “take out” France so that Germany could focus on Russia, so the US plan has collapsed in a humiliating defeat in Ukraine and an alliance between a massively strengthened Russia and an untouched China.
So just like Xi may be facing a closing window, so the US is facing a closing window. Might the US be tempted to exploit it while it still has a slim chance of prevailing?
Once again despite being a thoughtful intelligent article
It’s glaringly obvious just like 99.9%
Of Western MSM , Politicians and the Chattering classes
Clearly demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of China and it’s 5000 yr old History
Along with it’s Culture , Beliefs and it’s politics which today is no different from the System of Emperor’s
Go averse yourself of the 5th century BC writings of ” The Art of War” by Sun Tzu ( Master of The Sun )
However most English Translations
Make minor but very serious errors
And give a complete false true meaning and Purpose of The Writings
However here’s how Chinese Scholars view the writings
1 The whole purpose of The Art of War is actually how to achieve peace
2. So how does one maintain peace
Well then answer is a actually contained in the 13 Chapters
Condensed as follows
There’s 4 cardinal rules of warfare and it matters not who is the weakest or strongest
Because it’s the one who adheres firmly to the 4 Golden rules that shall prevail
The one who does not is merely sealing their own demise
So here’s those rules simplified
1 Know they foe to the smallest of detail ( and also Thyself )
2 . Fight only where you want to fight , never where the foe wants
( Think Afghanistan twas you that rushed in )
3. Fight only when you want to fight
Never ever when your Foe wants
( Afghanistan again you rushed in but run away years later )
4. Only ever fight the way you want to fight .Never ever the way your foe fights ( Afghanistan again How did you lose because it cost NATO $ 10 Million to kill just 1 Taliban
Whilst it cost The Taliban less than $ 1 to kill one of NATO )
And here’s the very essence and purpose of this book which concludes with this
” It’s the most cleverest of Warriors
Who wins by merely placing his hand upon the Sword ”
Now think Great wall of China
Built and fully functional in less than 6 yrs, study it’s design and particularly the supporting hinterland
It was successful because should you ever have been stupid enough to breach and ransack China
Then it would be impossible for any to escape alive
That wall was China’s sword
Now today China has built a 2 Nd Great wall as the Red line in the South China Sea
Breach this wall and your fate sealed
China refers to this as Access Denial Area
And here’s the Hinterland in the Shape of it’s Sword
Tens of thousands Hypersonic Missiles
10 million sea mines ready to sow
And of many different types
A huge Modern Navy
Combat Aircraft more than a match for The F 35
The ability and with terrifying speed to not only replenish but considerably increase all material and Human losses
You are now Warned
Do not even think about trying to stop of the Return of Tawain to the comforting arms of The Motherland
If you do so then it’s merely a Act of Suicide
Given all this, it was heartwarming to see Reeves sucking up to the Chinese government in the desperate hope a yen or two would be dropped into her begging bowl.
Wonderful to know that our net zero policies and assorted courageous efforts to reduce our carbon emissions from 0.8% of the global total to 0, will strength China’s (32% of global emissions) economy and power over the UK.
Years and years of talking head Cassandra warning of China invasion of Taiwan. Not gonna happen. China not a maritime nation. No lectures about 1640 please. It knows it cannot project power across 100 mile Strait.
It does, instead, work day and night to destroy US power until Taiwan begs to be recovered by China for lack of a viable option.
Mention below of green agenda destroying West to China’s advantage. West is willingly executing China strategy.
Watch out for the hantavirus. The GOF version would have a death rate of 35%.
N.S. Lyons this article unfortunately is typical of the new cold war fearmongering of western media. You have joined the propaganda machine to make China the enemy. It is not about Taiwan. It is about America losing it’s hegemony. The world order is shifting east and the west has trouble with that.
Isn’t it interesting that none of the commenters noticed that the author is distinguishing “Democratic” as an ideal not worth going to war over? Yet, that is precisely what Americans have done over the past 50 years—waging wars for an idea that doesn’t even fully work at home, let alone trying to impose it elsewhere. But that’s beside the point.
I suspect a lot of information was cut during editing. First, what does Taiwan actually want? We are always presented with Taiwan as if it exists in a kind of erasure—never fully speaking for itself. Yet, from what I understand, the Taiwanese people are ethnically Chinese. They celebrate Chinese traditions, speak one of the Chinese languages, and, in many ways, are culturally Chinese. Same people, different political systems. However, Taiwan appears to be following the American narrative, and we don’t really know what its true stance—both pro and con—that perspective is missing from mainstream discourse. But I think Taiwan may turn into Hong Kong scenario!
The second, even more interesting point is how we don’t use the word “ally” for Taiwan in the same way we do for Israel. That suggests to me that there’s something we’re not being told and that Taiwanese do not feel and “ally” but something else what is it? I have a feeling Taiwan is being manipulated, and ultimately, it may decide to align with China. If that happens, there is little the U.S. can do about it. That, to me, is the real underlying issue. China knows this information!
Anyhow, I don’t think the U.S. will go to war over Taiwan. I suspect Taiwan will ultimately align with China, and the U.S. won’t be able to stop it.
Does Taiwan really want to be at the center of a never-ending Cold War, like Israel—constantly fending off conflict? That kind of thinking—placing a small nation in the lion’s den and then wondering why there are so many wars—simply won’t work.
China has no interest in becoming the next Middle East. They are far more advanced than us, both in strategic thinking and technology.
The third point I find fascinating is the issue “exorbitant privilege”. As Trump once said, if the U.S. loses its reserve currency status, it effectively becomes a third-world country. I think this fear underlies much of America’s current strategy, and it may be why the U.S. may no longer engage in wars as easily as before. The ceasefire in Israel, for example, signals a shift—it’s no longer about enforcing ideals through war but managing internal fractures and economy instead. I think Trump will lean into having Trump tower in Beijing than be a war leader!
Another key point is that the West, including the U.S., cannot realistically decouple from China right now. Where would essential goods come from? Food, medicine, consumer products, manufacturing—so much of it originates in China and its allies. The supply chains are too deeply intertwined. While the U.S. may try to buy time, I believe the fractures will only deepen—not just between the U.S. and Europe, but also within America itself and among its allies (such as the EU, Israel, Canada, and Australia), who have long benefited from the hand-me-down/up war economy.
Ultimately, I think the U.S. has made a massive strategic mistake over the past 50 years—one that may prevent it from ever returning to its former global position. And all these articles are sort of defense mechanism to admit the strategic mistake and make amends with their own people!
How about negotiating a treaty for coexisting, sure that is better than ideological reasons for war.
1900, and Britain and Europe, their power at the zenith, their cultures utterly dominant, their people the most sophisticated on earth, their technological supremacy vast, blew away all their accumulated wealth, and their best people, through first WWI and then for good measure WWII, and the banton passed to the new world in the form of the United States, much, much faster than it would have otherwise. Britain and Europe became poor, recovered somewhat an echo of their former selves, and are now sinking fast again.
What I see is, China and the US about to replay the same pattern, with China cosplaying Germany and the US cosplaying Britain. It won’t repeat, because it never does, but it might rhyme. But one thing’s for sure – China will impoverish itself through the subsequent cold war if it goes for Taiwan, with an outside chance of dragging the United States down with it. But, such is the nature of leaders like Xi, they will do it anyway.
The idea of a Chinese land invasion similar to D-Day with, apparently, no one in Taiwan noticing is a bit much. That aside, it’s doubtful that China wants a shooting war. That would be bad for business. The only people talking about war are westerners, particularly those in leadership positions of media posts.
It’s all so very weird, the entire way the US is behaving, like a big, dangerous spoiled child. They were the ones who helped Ch’iang take Taiwan after the communists were their allies and the Nationalists unreliable in WW II.
What makes anyone think that Mr Trump or his cronies gives a damn about whatever happens to Taiwan. His America first foreign policy requires a stable relationship with China and the consequences of conflict with China would be disastrous to his interests. Apart from that China will handle the Taiwan ‘issue’ in its own way, just like it did with the Hong Kong farce.
“Though this scenario is fiction, for now, the chance of a major conflict over Taiwan in the not-so-distant future is real, and growing”.
Indeed it is fiction and unfortunately timed.
Just yesterday we had this:
BEIJING, Jan 17 (Reuters) – “China’s tourism ministry said on Friday that it has begun preparations to resume group tours to Taiwan from Shanghai and Fujian province in the near future, with Taipei saying it welcomed the move. China and Taiwan have argued since the end of COVID-19 about when and how tourists from China could resume visiting the island, which Beijing claims as part of its territory. Taipei strongly rejects China’s sovereignty claims”.
The Chinese population that migrated to Taiwan during 1946-49 civil war is estimated to be about 2.201 million. Its current population is just over 23 million. Mainland China’s has just fallen to 1.4 billion.
Also:
“Taiwan is the world’s leading producer of computer chips, with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) as the industry’s flagship. TSMC is the world’s largest supplier of semiconductors. Chip production accounts for a quarter of Taiwan’s economy”.
And where do many of those computer chips go to?
In 2023, Taiwan exported machinery and electrical equipment with a total value of about 69 billion U.S. dollars to mainland China. It was by far the leading product category for exports from Taiwan to China that year.
Capitalist Mainland China is currently facing several serious issues including a real estate downturn, weak consumer demand, a debt-fueled growth model and high youth unemployment.
A negotiated solution to the issues arising from the civil war that ended in 1949, that would allow both Mainland China and Taiwan to reach a mutually agreed solution that would enhance both economies, is far more likely than the military scenario the writer suggests.
Also Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Japanese counterpart Takeshi Iwaya have attended a second meeting in Beijing to discuss high-level bilateral people-to-people and cultural exchanges. (ie tourism) “The Japanese people welcome measures to enhance people-to-people exchanges”.
Yet Japan was the first nation to use modern germ warfare when they bombed the Chinese provinces of Hunan, Jiangsu, Jilin, Kwangtung, Yunnan, and Heilongjiang following its invasion of China that resulted in the war that lasted from1931 to 1945.
https://www.dontow.com/2009/04/japans-biological-and-chemical-warfare-in-china-during-wwii/
Time will tell.
Also having lived in China for a total of over 10 years since 2002 and visited Japan as a traveller, I am left with the impression that while the people of the latter are the most polite, helpful, accommodating and friendly of the 50 or so countries I’ve visited and lived in… well you can work out the rest…
What has happened to UnHerd?
Why other than those thumbs up and down images are we no longer offered the opportunity to reply to comments?
Has there been and invasion of UnHerd’s office by a certain country’s censors? (reassured it’s not you Liechtenstein)
Or is it an awayday jolly for the people who dedicate their lives to keeping this place online?
Mrs R asks –
“Given all this, it was heartwarming to see Reeves sucking up to the Chinese government in the desperate hope a yen or two would be dropped into her begging bowl”.
A Yen or two?
That’s some begging bowl Mrs R, the Yen is the official currency of Japan. (China’s is the RNB or Yuan or dozens of other names depending or where you’re travelling in the country)
Nevertheless:
In 2023, the UK’s exports to China were valued at £21.5 billion, a 1.6% decrease from the previous year. (hardly surprising given in impact of Covid) The top exports to China were power generating machinery and equipment, vehicles, precious metals, and pharmaceutical products. Also in 2023, there were over 33,000 Chinese nationals studying in UK universities and an unknown number studying in UK private and state schools.
Without those students how many universities would by now have filed for bankruptcy?
China is the second largest economy in the world, not far behind the USA.
So all strength to Rachel Reeves’ arm.
David McKee asks:
“Let’s hope that someone in China has read Fritz Fischer’s “Griff nach der Weltmacht”, which describes Imperial Germany’s choice of war to solve its foreign policy dilemma. The plan miscarried horribly.
Choosing war is never the choice of careful and cautious leaders. Is Xi as reckless as Wilhelm II? Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”
I dare say there’s someone in China’s 1.4 billion whose read the book. But other than its military invasion of Vietnam in 1979 when the Vietnamese demonstrated what they had learned after seeing off the Japanese, French and USA invaders, China has declined to go to war against anyone and has rather negotiated a settlement, often and increasingly from strength, but nevertheless, without going to war.
Brian Doyle writes a long and rambling post that ends:
“Along with it’s Culture, Beliefs and it’s politics which today is no different from the System of Emperor’s… Do not even think about trying to stop of the Return of Tawain to the comforting arms of The Motherland If you do so then it’s merely a Act of Suicide.
So the System of Emporer was all about shopping, eating out, drinking vast quantities of Beijiu and tourism, which is my observation from living in the country for over ten years in 27 visits from the UK since 2002, and travelling and living in 19 of the country’s Provinces?
Lyons seems to be looking forward to this Greatest War he imagines. Can we expect to see him in the front ranks?
Instead of beating the drum for war perhaps he should spill some ink on the more likely, less gory alternative imaginings. Xi is not an idiot. Taiwan, bombed back to the stone age, isn’t worth anything to him. The US is sliding into senescence all by itself; it’s just a waiting game now.
The populist idea of pulling back to prepare a defense of the “home counties” might be the best option for us. Why should we be the hegemon? How does that put sugar in my bowl? What’s in it for me?
This guy seems to think that aircraft carriers are some kind of anachronism. So to me his analysis is suspect. How else does a country project military power around the globe? Anyone?
Tik Tok. the efficacy of aircraft carriers is based on them not being vulnerable.
Think Japanese carrier fleet after midway.
Timing is everything.
The People’s Republic has fewer citizens today than it had in 2014. That trend will accelerate in the next twenty years. If so, and there’s no reason to believe otherwise, by 2100 China’s population with have fallen by 2/3 to about 525 million, with half of them over the age of 65.
https://www.vu.edu.au/about-vu/news-events/news/chinas-population-shrinks-again-and-is-set-to-more-than-halve
Xi is not only ageing, but his fellow citizens are getting older as they become fewer.
In days past the West marveled at the patience, and long term thinking that guided foreign policy in Asian nations. Today, with Xi in his 8th decade of life, and as the number of young men available to serve in the People’s Republic armed forces shrinks, time is not on his side.
Foreign policy in the West must appreciate that Xi may be willing to take risks to achieve his goal because of that facty.
The flip side, of course, is that this risk is one the West must endure for only a few decades. Lacking some major revolution in population growth in China, that county–like most of the rest of the world–will simply lack the people to undertake a robust militarily strong aggressive stance.
a very thought provoking article and one which amplifies the supposed weaknesses on both sides. I think choices on the the “western” side of the equation all appear to be bad but the choice of doing nothing and surrendering would be worse in terms of outcomes.
Meanwhile Xi and China appear to hold a lot of the cards but even a half hearted resistance from the US could make the the starts of Taiwan a very tough nut to crack, particularly for a power that has traditionally been land based, not maritime.
Either way, the stakes on both sides are very high.
Edward Luttwak, who contributes to UnHerd from time to time, has often tweeted in despair about Taiwan’s apparent inability or unwillingness to maintain a defensive militia, a “Home Guard”. With 23,000,000 population they could sustain such a force a couple of million strong. The US and Allies could support this militia with materiel, but until it is formed it is quite unclear that Taiwan has any real intention or desire to defend itself. Unlike Ukraine.
How did russias attack on Ukraine go?
And china hasn’t attempted a combined arms assault ever.
The risk seems really high.