Salutations. Today I'm going to be discussing how the status quo in the Taiwan Strait is being
undermined, and why this is leading to a potentially dangerous situation. Now, I care a lot
about this issue as a Taiwanese expat, but in this video I will try to be impartial and objective.
I'm sure my audience will be far more interested in informed and calm opinions
than some empty political rambling on my part. So let's get right into it. I'm going to assume some
basic background knowledge on your part. So, I will simply remind you of the following facts,
although I won't explain them. The official name of Taiwan is the Republic of China,
and this is because for a very long time its government claimed to represent
the whole of China. Taiwan is a self-governed island with its own military, foreign policy,
and legislature. The Taiwanese refers to China as 'Mainland China', so this is the terminology
I will use in this video. Taiwan is not recognized as a country by anybody. Even countries with
formal relations with Taiwan recognize its government as the Government of China.
For example, the Vatican City continues to regard the head of state of Taiwan as the president
of China. The current division across the Taiwan Strait is the direct result of the
Chinese Civil War, during which the Kuomingtang under Chiang Kai-Shek lost control of the mainland
to the Chinese Communist Party, and retreated to Taiwan as a result. Nowadays, Taiwan is getting
increasing amounts of international exposure, but for me the disappointing part of this is that
they are all related to politics. Few people in the rest of the world, especially in the west, are
interested in Taiwan beyond geopolitics. There is actually far more to Taiwan in terms of culture.
For example, we have a thriving aboriginal community; we have a complex mix of languages,
including the dominant Mandarin, and more local Taiwanese languages; we have also a very
complicated set of religious beliefs centered around a local version of Chinese Buddhism.
And all of these cultural aspects of Taiwan gets lost under the noise of geopolitics. But... I
guess this is another video covering geopolitics surrounding Taiwan, so we'll just get into it.
So let's talk about the current status quo or at least up until very recently.
The status quo is essentially a compromise between the interests of three parties. They are Mainland
China, the Republic of China or Taiwan, and the United States. So, under this compromise all sides
have an interest in sustaining the status quo, but none of these sides are fully happy because
they are not fully getting what they want. The status quo is the core of the US One China Policy,
where it formally acknowledges that there is only one China, and that it understands China's
position to be that Taiwan is a part of China, and the US does not seek to challenge that position.
But the US maintains an informal relationship with taiwan amid the status quo. This compromise
reflected the balance of power in the early decades of the opening up of US-China relations,
but this balance of power has of course changed in the last two decades. Compared to 1972,
when Richard Nixon became the first US president to visit the People's Republic of China,
the military balance of power between Mainland China, the US, and Taiwan has changed drastically.
Under the current status quo, Taiwan is not a declared or recognized sovereign state,
but in practice enjoys most of the privileges and the autonomy of one. This arrangement also allows
China to claim legal sovereignty over Taiwan in a de jure sense, buying it more time to allow future
unification. It also prevents the deployment of foreign troops and missile systems inside Taiwan,
which is of course beneficial for China. So, nobody is actually satisfied with the status quo,
but each preferred the status quo to the alternative of having to confront
the other parties to get what they want. However, the delicate set of incentives
and balance of power that supported the status quo has been undermined over time.
Mainland China wants to bring Taiwan under its control directly. It wants to unify with Taiwan,
preferably peacefully, but is willing to use force if necessary. The reasons for this are far too
complex to cover here, but it includes strategic reasons on China's part. So, Taiwan is right on
China's doorstep. And there is also ideological reasons, part of what the Chinese Government
refers to as the dream of national rejuvenation, and this is too big of a topic to cover here.
Basically, there is a myriad of strategic and ideological reasons why China wants to bring
Taiwan back under its control. The status quo has been beneficial to China, because
it buys time for China to grow its national strength both militarily and economically.
It parks the question of Taiwan to be settled at a future date, a future in which Chinese national
strength is much greater, which gives China a stronger hand to achieve unification with Taiwan,
by any means necessary. For the past three decades, China has tried to use its enormous
economic power to bring Taiwan into the fold peacefully. For example, Mainland
China has extended privileges and concessions for Taiwanese businesses operating in China.
It has also enticed skilled Taiwanese workers to work in the mainland. Beijing has also
extended preferential market access and other trade benefits to parts of Taiwan
that are represented, or otherwise governed, by China-friendly politicians. For a while
this economic strategy seemed to be working in terms of bringing Taiwan back into the fold,
until the emergence of the Taiwanese independence movement nurtured by the so-called Democratic
Progressive Party. While the prospect for a peaceful unification is slipping away,
the incentives for unification by force is increasing, because of a number of reasons.
Firstly, Chinese military power is growing relative to the United States and Taiwan.
Secondly, China does not face any land-based military threats, allowing it to focus its entire
attention on Taiwan and the Western Pacific. I know there are border conflicts with India,
but China I believe does not regard India as a threat, and that border is very much defensible
because it is just mountains. Lastly, the extent of China's economic dependence on the West
is decreasing. China obviously still counts on the US as an important export market, but it has also
forged a close economic relationship with Russia. Russia is obviously in a strong position to supply
the Chinese economy with the necessary resources and raw material, which reduces China's
vulnerability to a US blockade, and this means the perceived cost and risk to Beijing from using
force to settle the Taiwan question has declined. However, it is not just Mainland China that has an
incentive to undo the status quo. Taiwan's own desire to maintain the status quo is weakening
also. Up until the death of Chiang Kai-Shek in 1975, the Republic of China in Taiwan still
planned to one day retake the mainland from the Chinese Communist Party. However, starting
in the late 1970s, the military balance began shifting decisively in favor of Mainland China,
and the Republic of China became more concerned with just maintaining its control of Taiwan.
The dream of retaking the mainland was basically dead at that point. The status quo underwritten by
the military power of the United States is a good way for Taiwan to maintain its de facto autonomy.
Taiwan also benefited from increasing economic relationship with Mainland China. For example,
Taiwanese businesses would invest in China, opening up factories and taking advantage of
the low labor cost in the mainland. Agricultural exports to the mainland also blossomed. However,
starting in the 1990s a Taiwanese cultural identity began to increase in prominence.
Independence movements started to take shape. A key figure of the pro-independence movement
is Lee Teng-Hui. He was actually president of Taiwan from 1988 to the year 2000.
Lee Teng-Hui had dual citizenships, with a Taiwanese or Republic of China nationality and a
Japanese nationality. He has openly and publicly expressed his strong emotional attachments to
Japan, and he speaks fluent Japanese. Lee was born in Taiwan in Taipei, but he writes on his birth
certificate that his birthplace was the Empire of Japan, because Taiwan was under Japanese control
at the time. Lee has never felt Chinese, and probably felt more Japanese than he is Taiwanese.
Basically Lee Teng-Hui was a very prominent figure in getting the Taiwanese independence movement off
the ground. There are two main political parties in Taiwan. One is the China-friendly Kuomintang,
also known as the Chinese Nationalist Party. They are in opposition. The Kuomintang is the
party that lost the civil war to the Chinese Communist Party. But, today the KMT wants to
promote friendly relations with Mainland China. The Kuomintang is center-right in terms of
economic policy and they are deeply supportive of the status quo, although the more radical elements
within the Kuomintang wants unification with China at some point. The governing party
is the Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP for short, the DPP is left-wing in terms of economic
and social policy, but that is not what defines them. Their official stance with respect to China
is also to maintain the status quo, but everyone understands that their ultimate objective
is formal Taiwanese independence. But they cannot actually say it, because if they do,
people wouldn't be voting for them due to a fear of war. The incumbent DPP president of Taiwan
is Tsai Ing-Wen. Tsai had openly rejected what is termed the 1992 Consensus, whereby both sides
of the Taiwan Strait - so that is Mainland China and the RoC - supposedly reached the understanding
that there is only one China, but each side is allowed a different interpretation of what that
means. Throughout her presidency, Tsai Ing-Wen had made efforts to deepen a sense of Taiwanese
national identity, for example by changing high school curriculums, and deepened relations with
the United States, including the purchase of a large volume of overpriced second-hand weapons.
So in a nutshell, Taiwan is increasingly governed by pro-independence forces with an ideological
incentive to break the status quo. Furthermore, the growth of Chinese national strength,
particularly its military strength, means that, in the eyes of the Taiwanese independence forces,
time is running out. If Taiwan has to fight a war for independence, these people reasoned,
it may as well be now. Lastly let's talk about the US perspective. The United States is fundamentally
interested in maintaining its dominant position in the Western Pacific. The American commitment
to the status quo is fundamentally premised on its desire to maintain a working relationship
with the People's Republic of China. During the Cold War, Chinese support was obviously important
for taking on Washington's main strategic adversary at the time: the Soviet Union.
The US sought to exploit the Sino-Soviet split to undermine the Soviet Union. The end of the
Cold War obviously reduced the importance of the working relationship with China, but the strategic
cooperation between the United States and China was then replaced by close economic relationship.
American companies wanted to invest in China to take advantage of the country's low labor cost
and access to its vast markets to boost their own profits. So this held up the status quo in
the Taiwan Strait for some time. Following this, the US war on terror in the early 2000s and its
invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan served to occupy American foreign policy and military attention.
The One China Policy was upheld to keep peace in the Pacific. However,
as we all know, the relationship between China and the US has become totally adversarial.
The reasons for this are too numerous to list here, and the interpretation will be very
different from each side. At a high level, the adversarial relationship between US and China are
driven by economic competition and military tensions, to use the most neutral wording.
The reasons behind all this are not important for this video. Just understand that the deteriorating
relationship between the US and China has reduced the desire to maintain a working relationship
with China. The US is now far more interested in containing China's rise more than anything else,
and therefore there is increasing incentives for the US to end its One China Policy
and formally recognize Taiwan. When will the One China Policy finally die? Well, China has
of course stated that it is fully prepared to go to war in the case of Taiwanese independence. So,
before the US ends the One China Policy, it will probably have to test Beijing's resolve
with respect to its red lines. So this means more high profile visits by US lawmakers, sale of more
advanced weapons to Taiwan, military exercises or other forms of cooperation with Taiwanese military
forces. It will do all these things just to see how Beijing react to these moves. And all these
American actions will probably come very close to Beijing's red line without actually crossing it,
in the process of testing. If the Chinese response to all these provocations turns out to be muted,
then the United States may become convinced that China will not actually go to war over Taiwan.
The US may therefore feel emboldened to just drop the One China Policy altogether. If this ever
comes to pass, discarding the One China Policy will probably involve a number of different moves.
Firstly, the US will probably formally recognize Taiwanese independence. Secondly,
the US may extend security guarantees to the newly independent Taiwan.
It may even choose to deploy troops or actual boots on the ground in Taiwan,
and there is a possibility the US will station advanced missile systems to threaten the Chinese
mainland. But in the process of making all these moves, the big risk of course
is that the US gets it wrong, and that China is prepared to fight. This is the big risk I
see for the Taiwan Strait, and especially for the people of Taiwan, going forward.