If you have been keeping track of recent news, you might have seen Taiwan showing up in segments across cable networks. Recently the Trump administration approved over $1 billion dollars in weapons sales to Taiwan, angering China and consequently leading that nation to threaten sanctions on U.S. companies involved in weapons sales with Taiwan. China has been more and more threatening towards Taiwan as the years have passed, and this new deal has only further increased the tension between the two.
As the U.S. and China duke it out for world supremacy, Taiwan finds itself caught in the crossfire. Amidst growing tensions between China and the U.S., some people may be wondering: How and why does Taiwan play into all this? What makes this tiny little island so relevant to global politics?
First and foremost, to understand why Taiwan is important, we have to understand some basic history. I am Taiwanese-American myself, and one thing that I find funny is that whenever I mention Taiwan, people often mistake Taiwan for Thailand.
Taiwan is a small island located off the southeastern coast of China.The atmosphere of Taiwan is very complex. Taiwan is a blend of cultures that would otherwise seem like polar opposites and because of this Taiwanese culture is very distinctive.
Taiwan was first discovered by the Chinese around 239 AD and it was occupied by the Dutch from 1624-1661. Taiwan was then controlled by China until 1895 when the Chinese were forced to turn Taiwan over to the Japanese. The Republic of China seized control of Taiwan in 1945 after the end of World War ll.
In 1927 a civil war broke out in China between the Communist Party and the Republic of China, led by the famed Chiang-kai-shek. After a decade of hard-fought war, hostilities ceased due to the emergence of WWll. In 1945 the war resumed, resulting in the eventual victory of the Communist Party in 1949. This forced the Republic of China to withdraw into Taiwan, which as I mentioned before, had been under the control of the Republic of China since 1945. When the Communists took over in 1949, the Republic of China was completely removed from mainland China and its leadership fled into Taiwan. The war was over, but tension would persist in the relationship between the two groups up until present day.
Among the refugees fleeing China after the victory of the Communists were my maternal great grandparents and grandparents. My great grandfather, William Yu, was a general for the Republic of China.
Many decades have passed since the civil war, but those decades have been brimming with hostility and the looming threat of conflict that seems like it will boil over any day. China claims that Taiwan is a part of China, while Taiwan, now a democratic country, refuses to assimilate into China again. China has been more and more aggressive recently, and their military is far superior to Taiwan, meaning if China decided to take Taiwan back by force, they could.
This poses a tough dilemma for the Chinese who live in Taiwan: Do they want to go back to their Chinese roots or stay independent and separate from their homeland? Do they even consider themselves Chinese anymore? As a Taiwanese American myself I have asked this question before and I asked Jan Chin, someone who has immigrated from China to Taiwan and from Taiwan to the U.S., for her opinion on the subject.
When asked whether she considers herself Chinese or Taiwanese Chin says, “My roots are in China, Taiwan is the place I grew up. Both are my countries. I think Taiwan is part of China, I want to go back to China but not when it is communist. I’m waiting for the day China is democratic.”
So now we understand a little bit about the relationship between Taiwan and China, but we still have not answered why it matters to us. The relationship between China and the U.S. is also marred with hostility and tension, and in recent news, Taiwan has become like a flashpoint between the countries. The U.S. has been very supportive of the democratic government in Taiwan, much to the chagrin of China, who has been pushing for Taiwan to withdraw from trying to get recognized as a country. As China gets more and more threatening towards Taiwan, the U.S. has been supplying weapons to the undermanned Taiwanese. Taiwan has grown to rely on the U.S. for political support on the international scale, but they still depend on China economically, putting them in a difficult position. Taiwan is in the middle of a tug of war match between the U.S. and China.
If this hostility continues to escalate China could decide to forcefully take over Taiwan. If such a thing happened the U.S. could get involved and things could get messy. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act implicitly commits the U.S. to protect Taiwan if China tries to invade, and some legislators have even been pushing for this commitment to become explicit. If the U.S. decides to deploy troops in Taiwan, it would cause a war with China, something nobody wants, but if the U.S. does not support Taiwan it would look really bad for the U.S. on the international scale.
China and Taiwan are not going to make peace any time soon, and with their relationship deteriorating more and more by the day, fear rises for people in Taiwan as well as the hundreds of thousands of Asian Americans with relatives living in Taiwan, such as myself. If China makes their move, I wonder what the U.S. will do. How much is the U.S. willing to sacrifice for their allies? How much will they sacrifice to sustain democracy?
Written by: Nathan Bishop
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