Regarding the rise of doubts in Taiwan about US military aid if China invades, I have the following response. The doubts are reasonable, assuming that a Chinese takeover is not an existential threat to Taiwanese.
It is not, though, a response I would expect to hear from a Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese or Ukrainian.
Some Taiwanese academics and politicians do not believe a Chinese takeover is a threat to Taiwanese, not because they do not believe a Chinese takeover is a possibility or a probability, but rather because they do not believe, in their hearts, that there really is such a thing as a Taiwanese people.
I have no argument against that. A person in Taiwan can go from being Taiwanese to not being Taiwanese in a heartbeat. All they have to do is change their mind. The same cannot be said for real nationalities. A Ukrainian is going to be a Ukrainian whether they think they are or not.
A Vietnamese is going to fight a Chinese takeover even if completely abandoned by the Americans. There is no such transactional nonsense like “if you do this, this and this for us, maybe we’ll think of defending ourselves.”
If this kind of attitude becomes the norm in Taiwan, the US government should not risk its people, its wealth or its reputation to defend Taiwan. Consequently, I believe it is just a matter of letting Taiwan turn itself over to China, and finding a way to do that where the whole world can see that Taiwanese chose to do so.
If not, Taiwan’s people must resolve their national identity issue and demonstrate their will to resist a foreign (Chinese) invasion. They should go to next year’s presidential election polls and elect the Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate, Vice President William Lai (賴清德).
Simon H. Tang is an adjunct professor of California State University, Fullerton.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
RSS