The continuing rise of China will have huge consequences for Taiwan “almost all of which are bad,” University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer says.
In a study to be published in a forthcoming issue of National Interest he says that while most Taiwanese would like their country to gain de jure independence, that is not going to happen.
Mearsheimer, described by the US Army War College as an “icon in the field of grand strategy,” says the worst possible outcome for Taiwan would be unification with China under terms dictated by Beijing.
According to a theory developed by Mearsheimer, China will try to dominate Asia the way the US dominates the Western hemisphere.
“There is a powerful strategic rationale for China — at the very least — to try to sever Taiwan’s close ties with the US and neutralize Taiwan,” he says.
“The best possible outcome for China, which it will surely pursue with increasing vigor over time, is to make Taiwan part of China,” he added.
Mearsheimer says the US can be expected to go to great lengths to contain China and will have “powerful incentives” to make Taiwan an important player in its anti-China balancing coalition.
However, there are also reasons to think the US-Taiwan relationship is not sustainable over the long term.
“At some point in the next decade or so it will become impossible for the US to help Taiwan defend itself against a Chinese attack,” he says.
“When it comes to a competition between China and the US over projecting military power into Taiwan, China wins hands down,” he adds.
In a fight over Taiwan, Mearsheimer says, US policymakers would be reluctant to launch major strikes against Chinese forces in China, for fear it might precipitate nuclear escalation.
“The US is not going to escalate to the nuclear level if Taiwan is being overrun by China. The stakes are not high enough to risk a general thermonuclear war. Taiwan is not Japan, or even South Korea,” he says.
He says Taiwan is an especially dangerous flashpoint, which could easily precipitate a Sino-US war that is not in the US’ interest.
US policymakers understand that the fate of Taiwan is a matter of great concern to China and there is a “reasonable chance” US policymakers will eventually conclude that it makes good strategic sense to abandon Taiwan and allow China to coerce it into accepting unification, Mearsheimer says.
“All of this is to say that the US is likely to be somewhat schizophrenic about Taiwan in the decades ahead,” he says.
He says Taiwan has three options: Develop its own nuclear deterrent, have a conventional deterrence strong enough to ensure China will pay a huge price if it invades, or pursue the “Hong Kong strategy.”
Mearsheimer says that once China becomes a superpower, it probably makes most sense for Taiwan to pursue the Hong Kong strategy.
He says Taiwan could accept the fact that it is doomed to lose its independence and work hard to make sure that a transition is peaceful and that it gains as much autonomy as possible from Beijing.
“The option is unpalatable today and will remain so for at least the next decade, but it is likely to become more attractive in the distant future if China becomes so powerful that it can conquer Taiwan with relative ease,” he adds.
Mearsheimer says that Taiwanese should hope there is a drastic slowdown in Chinese economic growth in the years ahead and that Beijing also has serious political problems on the home front that work to keep it focused inward.
If that happens, China will not be in a position to pursue regional hegemony and the US will be able to protect Taiwan from China, as it does now.
“In essence, the best way for Taiwan to maintain de facto independence is for China to be economically and militarily weak,” he says.
“By trading with China and helping it grow into an economic powerhouse, Taiwan has helped create a burgeoning goliath with revisionist goals that include ending Taiwan’s independence,” he says.
“A powerful China is a nightmare for Taiwan,” he adds.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching