Background to the crisis – China rehearses landing: Taiwan’s next Ukraine?

The small island (twice Lower Austria with 24 million inhabitants) has an eventful history. Taiwan has always been part of China, but never part of the Communist People’s Republic of China.

Historic steles, large stone tablets on the island, carved the Imperial laws into characters that were traditionally rubbed onto rice paper and distributed that way. The Dutch came later and left their mark. They were thrown out by a Chinese ruler. In 1895 the island was annexed by Japan in a dictated peace.

At the Cairo summit in 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill promised Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek to return to China. In 1945, the civil war broke out, which Mao won in 1949. Chiang Kai-shek withdrew to Taiwan with the rest of his troops, then out of Mao’s reach.

Suddenly there were two Chinas
Now there were two Chinas: the People’s Republic of China (Beijing) and the Republic of China (Taipei). Taiwan is under American protection, but Washington also follows the principle that the island is part of China. Today, the Chinese leadership no longer wants to tolerate Taiwan as an “unsinkable US aircraft carrier” at its “door”. Head of state Xi Jinping stated in view of the upcoming party congress, which is important to him, that he wanted to realize the “unification of the homeland in our lives”.

“Bring back the renegade province” by force if necessary
What are the effects of the war in Ukraine on Taiwan? On the one hand, Beijing threatens to take the breakaway province home by force if necessary, on the other, Ukraine’s resistance shows that Taiwan would certainly not submit voluntarily.

The 24 million Taiwanese may be culturally Chinese like their mainland brothers and sisters, but today the “Republic of China in Taiwan” derives its identity from its democratic alternative to the communist system in Beijing – making it the CCP’s systemic rival. leader. Since the partial suspension of Hong Kong’s autonomy, everyone in Taiwan knows what to think of the offer of “peaceful reunification” (with full autonomy).

Beijing may have gained more appetite for Taiwan after the Hong Kong court — especially after this slack Western response to the abolition of democracy in the former British colony. But what conclusions are drawn in Beijing from the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion?

Beijing is running out of time, China’s identity is fading
Beijing is running out of time. Just as mainland China’s identity has faded in Hong Kong, so it fades among the “democratic” Chinese in Taiwan. The island is now a de facto state in its own right, but with no diplomatic relations with the world community (except with the Vatican). Taiwan is also a haven for Chinese dissidents, where they can operate freely. The island, like Singapore and most overseas Chinese communities, has not participated in Mao’s character reform (a simplification) and Mandarin is dwindling as an official language.

When it comes to the economy, Beijing can also be very pragmatic. Mainland China is Taiwan’s largest export customer; Yes, even more: 60,000 mainland Taiwanese companies provide some nine million Chinese jobs, including Apple manufacturer Foxconn. And so that the more than a million Taiwanese stationed on the mainland and their families there feel comfortable and continue to invest diligently, the Beijing leadership tolerates a slice of Taiwan in the middle of communist China.

In Dongguan, for example, about 100,000 Taiwanese families have their own urban infrastructure, including a school where even Taiwanese teachers teach according to Taiwanese curricula. In Kunshan near Shanghai, a large part of the infrastructure is also geared to the 100,000 Taiwanese. Nickname: Little Taipei. The real estate boom in Shanghai, a dangerous speculative bubble, is thriving with Taiwanese capital.

Global economy fears Taiwan superchips
In the wake of the high-tech race, Taiwan has even risen to a chip superpower. The corporate giant TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, annual turnover 34 billion US dollars) has a quasi-global monopoly on the very latest generation of super semiconductors, without which a modern world can no longer function. This will be a powerhouse in the era of US sanctions against China. 63 percent of all chips worldwide come from Taiwan. They supply 90 percent of US industry.

“Silicone Defense Shield”
And of course, China’s high-tech ambitions also depend on chips from Taiwan. A government official in Taipei jokes, “Our defense shield is made of silicon.” The poor island’s governments recognized early on that they could only build a high-ranking state based on “brain wax” and “that potato chips are the oil of the 21st century.”

Taiwan thus remains in a state of uncertainty, because a declaration of independence by the “breakaway province”, as Beijing leaves no doubt, would be the ultimate cause for war. The world’s problem with KP China is not that the Middle Kingdom wants to establish itself as a great power, but how it does it. Such a course can also catch the eye and cause a world conflagration.