War over Taiwan would only benefit the United States of America
China has repeatedly stated that they were exploring peaceful means for Taiwan and the islanders clearly prefer the status quo. But is there somebody they forgot to ask?
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In mid-May, public discourse was suddenly fired up after the People’s Republic of China (PRC) ran military drills “near” the coast of the island of Taiwan, which is held by the Republic of China (ROC).
Instantly, the disinformation warriors took to their keyboards to let the world know that China was going to invade Taiwan. One account even gave a date of early June, or less than two weeks, for their claim.
While this was a sensationalist claim from a random anonymous account with no credentials (Global Press Corp does not exist outside of this Twitter account), it does say a lot that several other accounts and even news sources jumped on the claim and ran with it.
This race to be the first to break news is, of course, driven by engagement and revenue. But it’s also driven by a climate the media has been cultivating for years, which has led to increases in hate crimes against Asians in Europe and North America.
The media conditions what the public wants to see, and then gives it more of that.
And in this climate, there is one topic that is a sure bet to exploit, and has been for years now: the “invasion” of the island of Taiwan.
After all, it’s a great David vs. Goliath story: the “small”, defenseless island against its huge, gigantic neighbor.
It has everything to keep people interested, which is heavily helped by the geopolitical interests at play over the island of Taiwan and against China.
But to properly understand what is happening and why we are suddenly being inundated again with stories of an invasion of Taiwan (and have been for decades), we need to understand the entire context, one that is often left out in favor of vibes-based establishment lines.
A short history of the dispute over Taiwan
China became a Republic — the same Republic of China in Taiwan — in the early 1900s. The Republic broke up however, and China found itself in a civil war with the “legitimate” Republic government and warlords who carved their own fiefdoms out of areas the government could not control. Civil war broke out over the whole country which, at the time, included the island of Taiwan as an integral part of the Republic. Soon, only two forces remained: Chiang Kai-Shek’s Republic, and Mao Zedong’s Communist Party. At some points the two were allied, and at others they were at war. For example, the communists first participated as the left-wing of the KMT — Kuomintang, the Republican party.
In 1933, the waning Japanese Empire invaded China to revitalize its economy and distract from problems at home. For the second time, a united front was signed so that they could fight together against the invader, and the civil war would pick back up afterwards.
And it did pick up later, in 1945, when Japan surrendered. By the end of 1945, both forces were about equally as strong. During the peace negotiations, the USA started arming and turning over captured Japanese equipment to the Republican forces in preparation for the civil war (Dr. Ken Hammond (2004). From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history: 'Lecture 34: War and Revolution'. The Teaching Company.)
The Communist forces won the civil war in 1948 and the KMT forces retreated to the island of Taiwan. They were able to do so with US help, who stationed their navy in the strait to prevent the Communist forces from pursuing the enemy, as they were allowed to do in this civil war, and forcing them to capitulate. At the time, China had no navy of its own to use.
Let’s remember that US foreign policy in the second half of the 20th century is marked by its rabid anticommunism, to the point of committing what could be called genocides. Korea in 1950 (up to 2 million dead civilians), Vietnam in 1954 (up to 2 million dead civilians), Indonesia in 1965 (in which the US provided weapons and intel to help the dictatorship kill up to 2 million “suspected communist sympathizers”, or Indonesian citizens in other words).
Likewise, when the KMT fled to Taiwan, they were met with some resistance by the native population who, up until then, had mostly been left to their own devices in Imperial China. In 1948, Chiang Kai-Shek ordered a massacre of up to 4000 Taiwanese civilians to quell future resistance to long-term KMT occupation of their home. This started the White Terror period which lasted until 1987.
At the time, the United States was not interested in sharing the world stage with communists, which threatened their imperialist interests. While they could not prevent the USSR from forming — U.S. soldiers fought against the Bolsheviks in 1918 — they would certainly try as hard as they could to prevent any more socialist republics from emerging.
Keeping the Republic of China alive, even if on Taiwan, would keep a lifeline open for the “legitimate” government of China, who had won this title in a bloody revolution against the last Emperor, to take back power. In other words, the ROC became legitimate by wrestling power away, violently, from the Imperial order; but the PRC was not allowed to do the same to the ROC on the basis that they were not following the “right” ideology.
The PRC, despite administering all of historical China after the Civil War, was not recognized at the United Nations until 1971, a full 22 years after they proclaimed the People’s Republic.
There, UN countries also agreed to the One China Principle: that China forms one indivisible whole, and states can recognize either the PRC or the ROC, but not both. This takes after the long history of China, which we will not get into, but it is important to note that this was, at the time, a position agreed upon by both the PRC and the ROC.
The Republic of China still proclaims to be the legitimate government of China, and sees themselves as temporarily having retreated to Taiwan. In this way, the civil war hasn’t really ended: it will only end when either one of the two forces stop existing.
The One China Principle helps both “Taiwan” and “China” (The ROC and PRC); while the ROC might lose support from some countries, it still cements their claims over a much bigger territory, the one they want to control.
Thus it’s a misnomer to simply call it “Taiwan”. Taiwan is the island; the state that currently administers this island is the Republic of China. Both the ROC and PRC consider Taiwan and “mainland” China as part of their rightful territory, owing to the One China principle and the long history of China more generally, inherited from the last empire, the Qing, who inherited China from the previous empire, the Manchus, who inherited China from the previous empire…
How likely is war over Taiwan?
With all this context in mind, we begin to understand the interests at play here. Certainly, the PRC is interested in “ending” the ROC once and for all, and removing that thorn in their side.
Likewise, the ROC is interested in regaining control over what they deem their legitimate territory, a continuation of the Qing empire’s borders which preceded their government.
But the past decades have shown both sides to be mostly content in the status quo, which brings about stability.
The PRC is being recognized and able to develop economically. The ROC is mostly being left alone.
This peace can not last forever; I will agree to that. There will come a day eventually where change will need to happen.
The PRC, however, has been very clear that they are not seeking a military solution to the Taiwan issue, and they have repeated this for years in their official communications. They are open to peaceful reunification, but have not been entirely clear on what that could look like. The most likely analog would be the Hong Kong handover which led to One Country Two Systems, allowing Hong Kong to retain their form of government for a number of years.
The only place where I see warmongering rhetoric is in the Western media.
The first question I get when I state this, of course, is: is this believable?
Well, let’s remember that in their 75 year history, The People’s Republic of China has never been the instigator of conflict.
They did participate in two border skirmishes: Once in 1962 against India, when India was trying to seize Chinese territory which prompted the PLA (People’s Liberation Army, the PRC’s military) to advance. And once again in 1979 when they were dragged by Cambodia against Vietnam, in a border skirmish that lasted all of three weeks and ended with China retiring from the hostilities.
Meanwhile, the US has been at war or in conflicts for over two-thirds of its history. No matter your age right now, you have lived through at least one large-scale conflict instigated by the United States — the most recent of which are the bombings of Syria and Iraq.
Depending on how you think of the definition between war and conflict, the US has been at war for over 93% of its history, but this figure includes the war of independence and other internal conflicts.
The US is also the biggest instigator of wars in the world: Against Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, and many more that I won’t get into simply due to the difference in definition between war and conflict.
Time and time again, the United States has dragged the world into wars it started to keep its spot as the world’s superpower.
It becomes clear that only one side is interested in such a war, and it is the side that has no business butting into this internal matter between the ROC and PRC. Their position does not reflect that of the average ROC citizen, who wishes for the status quo, nor the PRC citizen who sees the Taiwanese as their own people and doesn’t want to fight them.
Why does the US want this war so much?
This begs the question: Why is the US so interested in war over Taiwan? Why are we now seeing more and more warmongering rhetoric, to the point that people are announcing the war “any day now”?
After World War II, the US was in a good position in the Pacific: they controlled Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Through other deals and as we mentioned earlier, they also extended their influence over countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Mongolia, Singapore and Malaysia.
The interests are twofold: they are firstly economic, and then ideological.
On the economics side, the United States is able to receive a lot of cheap products by exploiting labor and the local currency (such as the petrodollar system).
This economic interest, which translates to material advantages to the United States and business owners, is what made the United States so rich. It then turns ideological: by making sure the system they put there stays in place, they will ensure they keep getting their share of the profits and they stay rich and powerful. If some better government was put in place, for example as it did in China after the civil war, they could threaten this order.
This is where we are at right now. The post-WW2 order is slowly crumbling away, piece by piece. China (the PRC) is now the world’s biggest economy, an economy that is built on actually producing things and not just extracting money, like the US started doing after the Breton-Woods Agreement.
China offers better deals to developing economies than the “traditional” order does, the one of the IMF and World Bank formed after World War 2. They are also part of their own exclusive economic forum, the BRICS forum, as an answer to the G6. Instead of the six biggest economies meeting to discuss their interests, BRICS meets with the largest growing economies, and discuss their interests which are at odds with what the G6 wants (which is to reinforce their economies at the detriment of others).
Meanwhile, the US was unceremoniously kicked out of Afghanistan only a few years ago and after only three months of fighting against Ansarallah in Yemen (who does not even control the entirety of the country), agreed they could not win and handed them everything they wanted on a silver platter.
What do you do when you feel threatened? You lash out. You become aggressive. You turn to war. After all, a good war is good for the economy (or at least for some people in the economy), and is good for getting the deal that you want — just like the British seized Hong Kong and imposed opium on the Chinese population in the Opium Wars.
At every turn, the US finds it can’t compete against China’s economy. They tried to kick out Huawei and even held the founder’s daughter hostage, and Huawei is now slowly getting stronger than Apple.
They tried to stop the import of Chinese solar panels, a source of cheap green energy, and are now left behind in green energy production.
Now, we are being told there is an “overcapacity” of Electric Vehicles, but we were not told this when Tesla, a Silicon Valley company, was spearheading the market — the market is suddenly only now at “overcapacity”, despite consumers demanding electric vehicles, when China starts to produce EVs of their own at affordable prices.
Taiwan is perhaps most well-known for its semi-conductor industry and TSMC, which makes most of the computer chips we use in the world. The US tried to ban China from this industry, and many at the time lauded this as the move that would kill China’s economy overnight. A few years later, and the opposite happened:
It seems that at every move, trying to contain the Chinese economy — as opposed to working alongside it, or even with it — seems to backfire spectacularly.
Taiwan represents perhaps the last excuse the US has to go to war against China. You need a reason for war, even if you invent it, and drawing back to the civil war is a good approach as any.
The point of such a war would be, simply, to destroy China’s economy and productive base. To raze everything down so that nothing could regrow. After which, a friendly puppet government would be installed, and the West would receive welcoming packages to settle their industry and exploit the Chinese market.
Whether the United States would reach this goal is an entirely different story, however.
That Taiwan, a supposed US ally, would obviously be at the center of such a conflict and not be spared by missiles and bombs is not a problem for the United States, who sees China as the enemy and is only concerned with destroying them.
Realistically, the island of Taiwan can’t hold on very long against China. In a conflict, if the PRC wanted it, they could launch missiles from their own territory — the distance between both shores is only 160km (100 miles), and many missiles easily reach that distance. The PRC could also easily blockade the strait of Taiwan through the air and sea, and destroy aid shipments.
Defending an island with no land routes for logistics is incredibly difficult. Anything that even approaches Taiwan, in such a scenario, could either be targeted or easily driven back. When aid (whether military or civilian) passes through borders in a land route, it is more difficult to justify a strike or intercept it in any capacity — as we see routinely in Ukraine, with aid being driven over from Poland.
The USA is thousands of miles away from the coast of Taiwan, and while they have some bases close by (in Japan and Korea, for example), these amount to very little compared to, well, China fighting in its home theater. Carriers and planes need to be refueled and pilots need downtime. The logistics of fighting a war against a peer such as China — when NATO can barely keep weapons flowing to Ukraine — is a nightmare that simply leaves Taiwan to fend for itself, especially when defending Taiwan is not and will never be the point of such a war.
War over Taiwan would only benefit the US
Neither the PRC nor the ROC want this war. Only the US and its propaganda arm the mainstream media clamor for it and try to convince us this is something we not only need, but should want.
War over Taiwan would not benefit me. It would not benefit you either. And it certainly would not benefit either the PRC or the ROC, who would lose countless lives in the pursuit of profits.
Make no mistake, war over Taiwan would be for the same reasons the US went to war against Afghanistan or Iraq, and is supporting ‘Israel’ in their genocide of Gaza — it is about controlling resources and making the rich just a little bit richer.
With the Republic of China (either through the KMT or DPP parties) reinstated over the whole of China, what we would see is simply the liberalization of the entire country of 1.4 billion. Privatization of state-owned enterprises to the highest bidder (of which there are plenty in China!) leading to mass layoffs will squeeze out the social benefits system. Austerity measures would then be enacted to “balance the budget”, leading to the dissolution of social welfare. Foreign capital would be merrily invited to take over the country. The most developed areas — the T1 cities — would keep being developed thanks to an influx of foreign capital (meaning foreign-owned assets as well, which China would not be allowed to touch) and brought up as a capitalist success story, like happened in Korea, while the rest of the country would be completely left out, such as Romania after joining the EU (there, 20% of the population lives under the poverty line).
This is the playbook every country “democratized” by the United States and the EU has gone through and this is what the US wants for China; something they want so bad, they are willing to go to war over it.
We must raise our voices to say: not in my name. There will be no imperial war done in my name and with my support.
The best end to the civil war is to simply let the ROC and PRC take care of this internal matter. Foreign interference, whether from the US or other states, is just that: interference. Taiwan is an internal matter that should and could have been over in 1949. Instead, it has become an issue that has spilled long past its warranted date and puts millions of lives in jeopardy.
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