Beijing taking steps to increase its military
pressure on Taiwan, carrying out now regular
amphibious assault exercises and military and
spy flights over the nation.
There are so many different factors right now that could
potentially lead to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
I think for older generations, they may
remember a Taiwan that produced cheap toys.
That, however, has really shifted.
Certainly on the semiconductor front, we've
over the years developed a greater dependency on
Taiwan. We don't have much choice in the matter.
The world sort of allowed Taiwan to become the top
manufacturer of advanced chips.
Silicon Valley was created, we created the semiconductor
industry here in America, and over the past few
decades we've just allowed ourselves to fall behind.
If something happens in Taiwan, we are in trouble.
The one-China policy is actually different from the
one-China principle, which is a concept that mainland
China has. So Beijing says that there is one China that
is under the communist government of the PRC.
At the end of the civil war in 1949, the Communists won
and formed the People's Republic of China.
And then the Nationalists fled the mainland and went
to the island of Taiwan, where they formed their own
government.
Pre-dating 1979, we recognized Taiwan as the
sole and legitimate government of China.
Then, under the Carter administration, that
recognition was switched.
The US has tried not to make any definitive statements
about Taiwan and its status.
We have the so called strategic ambiguity in our
commitment to Taiwan, which dates back 40 years because
we were just as afraid that Taiwan would use the
American security umbrella to be more assertive and
declare independence as we were worried about China
attacking. So we tried to prevent either of those
possibilities by making it unclear whether we would
come to Taiwan's defense.
Things have changed now primarily for two reasons.
The threat from China is simply becoming has simply
become too significant to ignore.
Its military has grown enormously since the 1990s.
With Taiwan, with its democracy, we don't have
that same concern or certainly it's significantly
reduced that Taiwan would unilaterally declare
independence.
Taiwan has managed to position itself over the
last 30 years as a contract manufacturer or original
design manufacturer of choice for many of the
world's leading technology companies, most of which
come from the states, quite frankly.
Companies like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft,
Google, Amazon and others.
The key major company that people talk about with
Taiwan is a company called TSMC, which is a chip
foundry, and they make chips and parts for so many
different American companies as well as other
companies around the world.
We don't make any of the world's most sophisticated,
smallest, leading edge chips in the United States
of America. Somehow we've allowed ourselves to get
into a position where we are utterly dependent on
Taiwan for those chips.
And those are the very chips that you need in
artificial intelligence, high end computing,
communications, military equipment.
We're still seeing capital being plowed into Taiwan at
really significant levels.
Yes, there are tensions in the Taiwan Strait, but the
global business community see Taiwan right now as an
important place to deploy capital.
And that's taking place.
One of Xi Jinping's major goals is what is called
national rejuvenation, which he wants to achieve by
2049. And part of that national rejuvenation is
bringing back to the homeland all territories
that that have not been subject to Beijing's
controls.
Xi is bet his entire life on being able to bring back
Taiwan into China's fold.
And so I think that what they did to Hong Kong is a
horrible omen for what's about to happen in Taiwan.
Officially, Beijing has not changed its position on
Taiwan. They constantly say that they want to have
unification with Taiwan.
However, we have seen President Xi Jinping and his
administration over the past couple of years
increase the military intimidation of Taiwan with,
for example, flyovers.
A lot of it coincides with China really feeling its
oats in military terms because it's now about 15
years that China's been, I think, pretty clearly the
world's number two military power.
Tensions between the United States and China are now
rising. At a news conference today in Tokyo,
President Biden gave Beijing a stern warning.
Are you willing to get involved militarily to
defend Taiwan if it comes to that?
Yes, we agree with the one-China policy.
We signed on to it and all the attendant agreements
made from there.
That really made a lot of headlines because it seemed
as though it was a breach of what has been the
traditional relationship between the US and Taiwan.
If you're worried that China may decide strategic
ambiguity means that the Americans really would sit
this one out because we didn't come to Ukraine's
defense either. You don't really want China to think
that way. You want them to believe there's a high
probability of a US response, a US military
response.
When the US made the shift to recognize Beijing
as China, it didn't necessarily want to be seen
as walking away from its relationship with Taiwan.
The US continues to supply arms to Taiwan and continues
to see Taiwan as an important economic partner.
And because of that, Beijing has been very
concerned in the past couple of years that the
relationship between Taiwan and the US appears to be
getting closer and closer.
So what we did have was we had the Indo-Pacific
economic framework the President launched several
weeks ago in Japan, and a number of economies have
signed up from that. It's an interesting framework.
Obviously, we'll have to see what what the meat looks
like on the bones. That's always where, you know,
that's where where the rubber meets the road.
Definitely a fear that we potentially could get into a
situation where China decides that it's best for
Beijing to take Taiwan by force.
And one wild card in all of this is that the power in
Beijing is becoming much more centralized.
I think we should be able—we collectively China, Taiwan,
the United States, Japan, other players—we should be
able to avoid war because we've been all talking about
it long enough, preparing long enough that everybody
has to go into this thing clear eyed about what could
happen if there were a fight.