@studentofearth

The Beijing government has never given up hope of reintegrating Taiwan. Territorial integrity is an existential issue for all countries, but it is especially sensitive for Beijing, which fears emboldening separatism in Tibet and other regions.

China has been divided for centuries multiple times. Beijing can wait a lot longer than the U.S. can.

The Taiwan government is constrained on both sides. It cannot offer to reintegrate with the mainland, as the island is a democracy and Taiwanese people would be unwilling to surrender their freedoms.

Phhhtt! Taiwan was a brutal military dictatorship for the first 40 years.
What was the excuse then?

At the same time, Beijing has credibly threatened war should Taiwan declare independence. Taiwan cannot formally drop its claim to mainland China, because it would be seen as tantamount to declaring independence.

There will be a unification, or an invasion one day. This century or the next.

#1 He is not the first to do so. China has effectively limited the ability to use the territory of Hong Kong and its people. Now American policy is putting the people of Taiwan at greater risk of having their lives disrupted.

New York Times ran an article in 2016 discussing the potential change in US policy towards recognition of Taiwan in relation to a phone call Trump made to Taiwanese president at the time.

What is the China-Taiwan issue?

Both players claimed, at least formally, to represent all of China — which they considered to include each other’s territory. That created problems, including periodic risks of war, for decades.

The disagreement dates to 1927, when civil war broke out in the Republic of China. The war culminated in Communist revolutionaries, led by Mao Zedong, mostly defeating China’s Nationalist government in 1949.

But the Nationalist leaders fled to Taiwan, which their forces still controlled. Though fighting eventually stopped, both sides continued to claim all of China. The Taiwan-based government considered mainland China to be controlled by illegitimate Communist rebels. The Beijing-based government considered Taiwan a breakaway province.

In this sense, the civil war was never fully resolved. Thus, Taiwan’s formal name is still the Republic of China. Mainland China — controlled by the Communist government in Beijing — is called the People’s Republic of China.

Their dispute became a global Cold War issue. The Soviet Union and its allies recognized Beijing as China’s rightful government, while the United States and its allies recognized the Nationalists in Taiwan. The Taiwan government even held the United Nations seat for all of China.

In the 1970s, the world began accepting the reality of a divided China. Beijing took over the United Nations seat in 1971. President Richard M. Nixon traveled to mainland China the next year. In 1979, America switched its recognition from the Taiwan government to Beijing’s. Many other countries followed suit.

Since then, no American president or president-elect is believed to have spoken with a Taiwanese president — until the phone call on Friday.

Why don’t China and Taiwan just split?

This would be extremely difficult for either government.

The Beijing government has never given up hope of reintegrating Taiwan. Territorial integrity is an existential issue for all countries, but it is especially sensitive for Beijing, which fears emboldening separatism in Tibet and other regions.

The Taiwan government is constrained on both sides. It cannot offer to reintegrate with the mainland, as the island is a democracy and Taiwanese people would be unwilling to surrender their freedoms. At the same time, Beijing has credibly threatened war should Taiwan declare independence. Taiwan cannot formally drop its claim to mainland China, because it would be seen as tantamount to declaring independence.

This led, in 1992, to a semiofficial arrangement: Both countries agreed that there is only one China, encompassing the mainland and Taiwan. But they also agreed to disagree about what that means.

When our domestic semiconductor production capacity was exported and further developed in Taiwan was one of the recipients.

Books and articles have expounded on the political, military and geostrategic aspects of the problem, with intriguing maps of the first and second island chains blocking China’s access to the Pacific Ocean.

But these analyses about Taiwan’s fate often ignore one of the most worrying aspects of the problem: American reliance on Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing.

As David Arase, professor of international politics at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, notes, “Even an unsuccessful invasion of Taiwan would cause a supply chain disruption.”