The split personality of the government in Taipei

MONDAY, 17 OCTOBER 2022

On 10 October 1911, a series of uprisings started that, over the course of the next few months, led to the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the birth of the Republic of China. After a decade of violence and political tug-of-war, the Chinese Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek ended up in control of the republican government.

The island of Formosa is about 200 kilometres from the Chinese coast. The island was ruled by Qing China between 1683 and 1895, when it was ceded to Japan. A few weeks after Japan’s surrender in 1945, officials from the Republic of China stepped of a boat in the north of Taiwan with a United Nations mandate to administer the island until a final peace treaty was signed with Japan.

In his authoritative report of the period, Formosa Betrayed, George H. Kerr narrates that the officials of the Chinese republic saw Taiwan (or the island of Formosa) as a warehouse full of luxuries that needed to be plundered as quickly as possible. Factories were dismantled and shipped to Shanghai. Furniture, ornaments, bicycles, money, jewellery, and anything else that looked like it might have value was looted and robbed either by government officials, or by soldiers brought in to terrorise the local population.

By early 1949, it was clear that the republican government, then based in Chengdu in southwestern China, was going to lose the civil war against Mao Zedong’s Communists. Between January and December 1949, most of the republican politicians and institutions, a lot of cultural treasures as well as financial resources under the control of the Republic of China were moved to the island of Formosa.

The six million inhabitants of Taiwan were not consulted about this takeover of their island by the Nationalists. For the next four decades, the population’s complaints about everything from the denial of human rights to the corrupt expropriation of property were brutally silenced.

By the early 1990s, enough of the Civil War era politicians had died out, and supporters of the idea that the government in Taipei would eventually retake power in Mainland China became fewer and fewer. In 1996, the first Taiwan-born person was chosen as president of … the “Republic of China”, because calling it what it really was – the Republic of Taiwan, was a controversy that would send the missiles flying across the Strait of Taiwan.

On 10 October 2022, several hundred thousand people in Taiwan actively celebrated the anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China (millions, of course, enjoyed the holiday without attaching any political value to it). The president of the “Republic of China”, Tsai Ing-wen, also solemnly celebrated the day with a speech. Although she referred to Taiwan as the “Republic of China”, most of the speech was about the island of Taiwan.

In a speech on 4 August 2022 in response to live-fire drills by the Chinese navy and army around Taiwan, she referred to the threat to “our nation’s sovereignty”. The question remains: What nation was she talking about? Taiwan? China? If she was talking about the island of Taiwan with surrounding smaller islands under Taipei’s administration, and the 24 million Taiwanese (and other long-term residents), then why at all celebrate the founding of the Republic of China – which for all practical purposes is a decayed relic of Chinese history? I understand that the government in Beijing threatens to go to war the moment Taipei officially declares independence, but is that reason enough to still solemnly party on October 10th every year?

It is clear that to be able to distinguish between the official independence of Taiwan and de facto independence requires a lesson in political doublespeak. But that the government in Taipei still uses the flag of the losers of the Chinese Civil War, the flag of the looters of Taiwan and the oppressors of freedom and human dignity, and still after seven decades actively celebrates the founding of a state that has long ceased to exist, is sometimes difficult to grasp.

Flag of the Republic of China, 1912-1928, before it was replaced by the government of Chiang Kai-Shek with the flag below
The flag of the Republic of China, 1928-1949, after which it served as the flag of the ROC on Taiwan

* * *

The dream of independence of millions of Taiwanese (not all, but a large proportion of the adult population) is understandable. Even in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Taiwan was only an afterthought for the Qing government in Beijing. Then for fifty years the island was part of Japan, and for the last seventy years, it has been ruled separately from Mainland China. Generations of Taiwanese have been born and have lived their entire adult lives with the daily reality that the island is governed separately from China.

On the other hand, I also understand the argument of Greater China supporters, who consider the majority of the population of Taiwan to be part of the same ethnic family as the majority of the population of Mainland China. Language and cultural roots are also shared. Thousands of families in Taiwan have relatives in China whom they visit regularly.

I also understand that the government of the People’s Republic of China has an argument for reunification. They see themselves as the inheritors of Chinese history, with the responsibility to the ancestors and descendants of the Chinese population to make whole what had been broken by the end of the Qing Era.

Whether the People’s Republic can make a legitimate argument about jurisdiction over Taiwan requires a deep dive into the murky waters of treaties signed after World War II between Japan and America, and between Japan and the Republic of China. It was, for example, not spelled out specifically who Taiwan belonged to after Japan had ceded control over the islands.

Arguments aside, what sometimes irritates is the split personality of the government in Taipei. I appreciate the thorny problem that if independence is officially declared, the government in Beijing will have little choice but to carry out its decades-long threats. The Taipei government nevertheless walks a fine line. Passports are issued these days with “Taiwan” in large Roman letters, and “Republic of China” only in Chinese characters. Statements are made about Taiwan’s independence, but under the name “Republic of China”. Says President Tsai Ying-wen in an interview with the BBC after she was elected in 2020: “We don’t have a need to declare ourselves an independent state. We are an independent country already and we call ourselves the Republic of China (Taiwan).”

Taiwan passport

If Taiwan were truly independent, would the president not refer to her country as the Republic of Taiwan? And how much does it matter that Taiwan is officially only recognised as independent by fourteen countries and doesn’t have a seat at the United Nations? Most countries do maintain diplomatic offices in Taipei, but none are official embassies, in deference to the People’s Republic of China that considers Taiwan a province of China.

The fact of the matter is, there are three actors in this play: The group advocating for Taiwanese independence, who make pretty strong arguments; the government in Beijing (and supporters of reunification in Taiwan), which also makes points that cannot be dismissed out of hand; and then there’s the government in Taipei which officially upholds the One China policy, but also makes no claim to being the legitimate government of Greater China, and – at least for the last two or three years – also claims that Taiwan is independent, but under the banner of the Republic of China. Can anyone be blamed for being confused?

* * *

What do I see as a more honest situation than the current shuffle closer to the abyss? I reckon: A cooler relationship with America – an unreliable “friend” at the best of times; a warmer relationship with Beijing – albeit with a government dominated by a political party that was not appointed by the Chinese people and cannot be removed by the Chinese people except with extreme violence; and increasingly less emphasis on the symbols of, and less reference to, the obsolete relic of history, the Republic of China.

Naive and unrealistic? I guess so.

———————-

A few useful links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_Undetermined_Status_of_Taiwan: “In 1950 […] United States President Harry S. Truman said that […] ‘the determination of the future status of Formosa must await the restoration of security in the Pacific, a peace settlement with Japan, or consideration by the United Nations.’ This statement of Truman is generally regarded as the origin of the Theory of the Undetermined Status of Taiwan. In 1951, Japan concluded the Treaty of San Francisco with the Allied Powers. It renounced all right, title and claim to Taiwan and the Pescadores without explicitly stating the sovereignty status of the two territories.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_San_Francisco: “President Ma expressed that the Treaty of Taipei has voided the Treaty of Shimonoseki”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Taipei: “Article 4: It is recognized that all treaties, conventions and agreements concluded before December 9, 1941, between China and Japan have become null and void as a consequence of the war.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_independence_movement: “The governments of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) oppose Taiwanese independence since they believe that Taiwan and mainland China comprise two portions of a single country’s territory. For the ROC, such a move would be considered a violation of its constitution.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan: Specifically look at the “Arguments for the Republic of China and/or People’s Republic of China sovereignty claims” and “Arguments for Taiwanese self-sovereignty claims and its legal status”

———————-

The birth of the Republic of China is celebrated on October 10th, and 1911 is seen as the first year of the Republican Era. Yet the Republic of China was not actually founded on 10 October 1911. A quick timeline:

1894-1895: War between China and Japan

1899-1901: The Boxer Rebellion

14 November 1908: Emperor Guangxu dies; one day later his aunt, the powerful Empress Dowager and Regent Cixi, dies (the suspicion is strong that she had her nephew poisoned)

2 December 1908: Aisin-Gioro Puyi, the two-year-old son of the Manchu Prince Chun, is crowned as the Xuantong Emperor, the last of the Qing Empire

10 October 1911: The Wuchang Uprising leads to a series of uprisings across China

November 1911: fourteen of fifteen provinces in China reject the Qing government

1 January 1912: The Republic of China is established

12 February 1912: Empress Dowager Longyu signs the abdication decree on behalf of the now six-year-old Puyi. This ended more than 2,000 years of imperial rule in China.

Empress Dowager and Regent Cixi; the Xuantong Emperor, better known as Puyi; Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek

______________________

What I needed in February 2004

TUESDAY, 4 OCTOBER 2022

I’m reviewing the February 2004 pieces, “Advice about staying or coming back”, “Slave to the word” and “About friends, and other personal reasons”. It’s unpleasant to read. I had an intense desire to go “home” (“home” in quotation marks, because why wasn’t Taiwan home?). It can be simplistically argued that I was afraid to take the step after five years in Taiwan where I had created a comfortable life and home for myself. However, I had a strong suspicion that it would have been the wrong move for me. I felt that a conventional life with a 40-hour-a-week job and salary and house in the suburbs was something that wouldn’t work for me, even if I could put all the parts together. I could say I wasn’t special, and if millions of my contemporaries could get the hang of it and find happiness in such a life, surely, I could too. Fact of the matter is that people differ. One man becomes a professional soldier, and his old childhood buddy becomes a high school Science teacher. Why don’t both become professional soldiers? Why not both teachers? People differ.

The man behind his computer early 2004

FRIDAY, 7 OCTOBER 2022

The pieces from early February 2004 are … strange to read now. The situation was that before the end of the first week of February I had to go for a medical examination as a requirement to extend my work permit. I was also desperate to leave Taiwan, and to go back to South Africa (it wasn’t necessary that the first action should lead to the second). I knew that if I did not do the medical test on time, my work permit couldn’t be renewed, and then my residence permit would expire. I would then have no choice but to leave Taiwan. The icing on the cake was that I had never been keen on doing the medical. So, all I had to do in order to get my way – to leave Taiwan, and probably go back to South Africa – was to not do something I didn’t want to do anyway.

On the other hand were the memories of the previous time I was in Northeast Asia, with a job and an income and a place to live, and me deciding that I simply had to make a move – as soon as possible.

If I made the wrong decision, I knew, I might be paying for it for years to come.

From “The last exile” of Monday, 22 December 2003 up to and including the few paragraphs titled “11 February 2004” is a piece of personal history of me basically arguing with myself.

WEDNESDAY, 12 OCTOBER 2022

00:57

The possible lifting of my exile in February 2004 was a complete fuck-up. On the one hand, I put pressure on myself: “If you want to feel like you belong somewhere, you must leave behind the life you built up in Taiwan and go back to South Africa. That way you can enjoy barbecue and pudding with your parents and your sisters as often as you want.” And from the other side an admonition: “You’ve already written so many pieces about going home. If you don’t act now, no one will believe you ever again if you say something.”

With a personality like mine, plus the right psychological pressure points, you don’t need many enemies.

12:36

I wrote in the piece, “And the answer is …”: “The product [that I tried to sell to myself] is one that I need. It’s the pill I need to swallow to continue with my life.”

The implication, if you read the piece, is that the product was to pack up my life in Taiwan and go back to South Africa – to be closer to my family and to feel I am in a place where I should be.

Looking back after almost two decades, I want to venture a better interpretation: What I really needed was a conviction that I belonged where I found myself at that moment of my life – be it Taiwan, South Africa, or anywhere else in the world. I needed to be convinced that wherever I was, was right for me – or in stronger terms, that I was in a place where I was supposed to be. In February 2004, I believed that that place was not Kaohsiung in the south of Taiwan, but rather in the province in South Africa where my parents and younger sister were living at the time.

What I needed was to develop a sense that Taiwan was indeed right for me. But more than that – that one can belong in a place far from where you were born and grew up, just as you can feel lost in the very place where you first took root.

______________________

I write to survive

SATURDAY, 6 AUGUST 2022

Writing is prayer/To write is to pray.

(When I write, I believe someone will read it. When millions of people pray, they believe someone will hear it.)

MONDAY, 3 OCTOBER 2022

I am translating the last of the Personal Agenda pieces that I didn’t translate ten years ago. It brought me in close contact again with questions I wrestled with twenty years ago: What should I do with my life? What type of adult life do I want, or need, to develop for myself? And: Should I leave Taiwan on Thursday, 4 March 2004?

Being able to spend hours every day on writing projects was an important consideration in my decision-making process. It was an important factor in 2001 when I was developing ideas about what type of adult life I wanted to lead, and it was an important consideration when I had to decide in the last months of 2003 and the first two months of 2004 whether I was going to go back to South Africa with all my earthly possessions in tow.

As I’ve worked on publishing my writing over the last decade, I often wondered why I never wrote more. One sometimes hears of so-called prolific writers who’ve produced dozens of novels, several collections of short stories, articles, poems, and a few plays to boot. My average for the last ten to fifteen years has been about 20,000 words per year (not counting pieces that I consider unpublishable).

However, if I look at months like September 2003 and February 2004, I see that I wrote as much in those months as I would later write over the course of a whole year. How does that work?! And why couldn’t I keep it up?

Fact is, I only write when I have something to say. If I don’t want to say something specifically, there’s no inspiration.

I also wrote in the February 2004 piece, “Slave to the word”, “I believe I’ll slide into a bottomless depression if I write less.” I have also mentioned many times over the years that I am at my happiest when I’m working on some piece of writing. As the months of September 2003 and February 2004 made clear, writing is a mechanism that helps me to survive. That’s why I’ve never put much effort into marketing my writing, and why I’ve never put much effort into trying to monetize it.

Writing helps me make sense of things. And it has always been a good way to work out solutions to dilemmas in the absence of people with whom I could talk about certain matters, or with whom I could discuss things as much as I deemed necessary.

To summarise: I only write when I need to write. I write to survive.

______________________

Considerations before you spend money on information

WEDNESDAY, 17 AUGUST 2022

Seeing as I’m on Twitter almost every day, and have a few of my own products to market, not to mention this site and the Afrikaans version which could always do with some extra readers, I thought it might be good to invest in a course on how to make money on Twitter. The hottest product on Gumroad is a guide called “The Art of Twitter”, available for $89.00 (or if you’re lucky and get it at a discount, $62.00). More than 5,000 copies of the guide have already been sold, so it’s certainly worth considering.

However, I hold back before I press the “Buy Now” button. Here are the reasons:

I have bought many information products. Almost always you are disappointed at the end. Why? Maybe the content is nothing but rehashed nonsense. In other cases, the information is decent enough, and you learn things you didn’t know. What’s the problem then? You complain that you hoped there would be “more information”.

What you really mean: You were hoping on the last page of the PDF would be an incantation that conjures up a fairy who will do all the work for you. Because this is the inevitable next step: Six months plus of mostly boring work before you see any results.

The other reason I’m holding on to my $89 (or $62) is because – so I reckon – you can get most of the content for free if you just search for it on Google (or Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo or Brave). Check out the table of contents: The basics of Twitter; Picking a niche; How to attract followers; Popular tips NOT to follow; Growth strategies; How to create tweets that get likes, retweets, and engagements; The easiest, fastest, and safest ways to make money with Twitter; How to avoid getting banned; How to build a strong network. Then there are the bonuses: How to create and monetize Twitter bots; Growing beyond Twitter (Reddit, Telegram, Instagram, Facebook); a free 3-month subscription to an automation tool; and an archive of 258 of the author’s best tweets. Besides the 3-month subscription (on your own you get seven days free anyway, and after that it’s $12.49 per month minimum), you can find similar information in sometimes long, detailed articles on the first page of Google’s search results – provided of course you use the right phrases and keywords. Similar research can also be done on YouTube, Pinterest, and of course on Twitter itself, where people regularly publish mini articles on the topic.

Wouldn’t it save time to just buy the product? I reckon: Not really. It doesn’t take long to search for information, and you can read five or six different articles instead of getting just one person’s view. And there’s always a possibility that one article will give you additional phrases with which you can search for more information.

Why, when you can get most of the information for free, do people still spend so much money on a set of PDFs?

The psychological factor. You feel if you spend more than a few dollars on something, you will surely jump in and make use of what you learn. Plus, an information product worth a quarter of the retail price will provide you with a plan you can start executing once you’ve read the last few pages (and, to your dismay, seen there’s no incantation for a fairy who’s going to do all the work).

So, what should you do if you want to continue your attempt to make money from Twitter?

Ask yourself when you want to start, because what you’re looking at is a new part-time job. Want to get started right away? Tomorrow morning? Next Monday?

Then you need a plan, preferably in steps: Who is your target market? What topic are you going to focus on? What will you include in your Twitter profile? What type of content will you post? How often will you be posting content? A list of big names in your chosen niche that you should follow, and whose content you should respond to. And so on.

Then, time to do some research.

If you don’t mess up too much, you might be able to buy yourself a new lawn chair in a few months with your accumulated Twitter dollars – or, who knows, perhaps a new car.

______________________

A change of opinion about China and Taiwan

Sunday, 7 August to Thursday, 11 August 2022

Chinese military exercises and encirclement of Taiwan

Sunday, 7 August 2022 was the day I changed my opinion about Taiwan and China. As recently as last Friday, I had a conversation with a Taiwanese businessman about the possibility that China could invade Taiwan. I mentioned that there are people who can explain in detail why such a military endeavour would fail.

After this week’s visit by the US Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and China’s live ammunition military exercise around the island, I realised that Taiwan only enjoys her de facto independence because China has not yet decided to formally incorporate Taiwan.

Barring the Chinese Communist Party losing its governing power over China or changing its dogma, Taiwan cannot do much to change her inevitable fate. China will eventually pull Taiwan into its sovereign territory, most likely without firing so much as a single missile.

The reason? The island has woefully inadequate resistance to encirclement and blockade. (That’s not to mention the power outage that left a third of Taiwan without power and Internet for almost an entire day in March because an employee forgot to do something before he turned on a switch. How hard would it be for a saboteur to do something similar in the future?)

Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in America, reckons that the current Chinese military exercise, which includes more than sixty aircraft and fourteen warships surrounding the island, is indeed a pre-blockade demonstration. According to him, a full blockade would include threats to shoot down aircraft, the placement of sea mines in ports, and the deployment of air and naval forces in a full circle around Taiwan. He adds that this episode is the first opportunity for the Red Chinese Forces to prove to themselves and to Taiwan that they are indeed capable of enforcing a full blockade.

Then there are some other inconvenient facts: 1) According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Taiwan has oil reserves for about four and a half months, but only 12% of Taiwan’s energy is generated locally. About one-third of Taiwan’s electricity was generated by liquefied natural gas in 2021, which must be imported. If China blocks these imports, it could bring Taiwanese manufacturing to its knees within days. 2) Although Taiwan is almost self-sufficient in aquatic products, fruit, meat, vegetables, and eggs, it can meet only 35% of its population’s food needs. (The government did launch a program in the last few years to address this problem, though. The Borgen Project indicates that in 2018, Taiwan spent $4 billion importing agricultural products, but has since built up stocks of essential items sufficient for about 28 months.) 3) Thousands of other types of products are unloaded from cargo ships daily to stock store shelves – items such as clothing, shoes, cat litter, cooking oil, toothpaste, cheese, shampoo, baking soda, medicine, and a wide range of electronic devices and medical equipment. These products make life liveable and enjoyable for Taiwanese citizens and thousands of foreign residents. Life on the island will become increasingly uncomfortable if these products are no longer imported.

Bernhard Billmon writes in a recent article on Moon of Alabama, “China indeed has the capability to completely blockade Taiwan. As the whole area is also under cover of China’s land-based ballistic missiles and in reach of its airforce a blockade is easy to establish and hard to breach.” (My own emphasis) He further writes: “A total blockade of Taiwan would likely bring it to its knees within a few weeks or months. Time that could be used to defeat its air force, air defenses and missiles and prevent attacks from Taiwan on China’s continental assets. China does not have to invade the island. It just has to wait until it is invited to come in.” (Again, my own emphasis)

The New York Times quotes Bonny Lin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington as follows: “If a military exercise transitions to a blockade, when does it become clear that the exercise is now a blockade? Who should be the first to respond? Taiwan’s forces? The United States? It’s not clear.” According to the same article, Eric Sayers, a former senior adviser to the U.S. Pacific Command reckons: “Instead of announcing a military blockade [the Chinese government] may instead announce an extended military exercise around Taiwan that closes or disrupts shipping routes for 30, 60, 90 days. This makes it less a military operation and more a form of legal warfare to justify an indirect blockade for a duration that Beijing can manipulate.”

One of the points that Taiwanese people often make in discussions about Taiwan’s ability to defend itself is that Taiwan might be defeated, but at great cost to China, given that Taiwanese missiles could hit at least one major city, such as Shanghai or Shenzhen, doing great damage to it before the Chinese Red Army silences the weapons.

But will Taiwan start firing her missiles ending thousands of lives on the Chinese mainland because she is surrounded by the Chinese navy? It’s highly unlikely. If it does happen, China will have no problem convincing the world that they had no alternative other than a military response.

Will America or Japan send their warships to force the Chinese navy to end the blockade? Again: A low probability of this happening.

A few weeks or a few months of dwindling gasoline and food supplies will bring hundreds of thousands of people in Taiwan to the streets to force the government to start negotiations. Remember: Between ten and fifteen percent of Taiwan’s population supports unification with China. After a few weeks of empty store shelves, I have no doubt that that number will be a few notches higher.

Despite the fact that encirclement and blockade will cause problems for the population in the short term and will lead to problems in the international supply chain of computer parts, the Taiwanese economy will not be harmed in the long term. I reckon (off the cuff, no data to back it up) that Taiwan will be back to 100% two years after the blockade ends. This undermines another argument that people make about why China will not launch any aggressive actions.

I believe that a large majority of Taiwan’s population is willing to fight for the preservation of the status quo, or for de facto independence. As a long-term resident of Taiwan who is grateful for the home the island and her people have provided me, I also hope that the island and her people will continue to manage their own affairs as they see fit, as they have proven over decades that they are fully capable of doing so, and that they deserve it as much as the people of Japan or South Korea or any other country in the world.

But we live in a world with certain realities. One of these realities is that the Chinese Communist Party believes Taiwan belongs to China, and that they have the right to formally incorporate Taiwan into Chinese territory whenever and however they see fit. Until recently, I thought it meant Chinese soldiers on Taiwanese beaches, and thousands of missiles raining down on Kaohsiung and Taipei and other cities.

The past week has proven that a Chinese takeover of Taiwan need not be nearly as violent. Which makes the likelihood of that happening uncomfortably high.

To summarise:

1. Advocates for Taiwanese independence can make good historical and legal arguments why Taiwan is none of China’s business. More important than their arguments: The Chinese Communist government doesn’t care. It is part of Communist Party dogma that Taiwan is part of China. End of story. Microphones turned off. Debate is over.

2. China can start to take over one small island under Taiwan’s control after another and justify it as part of a new strategy to defend China against “enemies of the Motherland”. After that, they can surround Taiwan for months at a time and call it military and naval exercises. No one to be taken seriously doubts that they have the military capacity, the economic capabilities, and the political will to do so.

3. Taiwan can defend itself against an invasion where Chinese troops storm the beaches, and where the Chinese air force rains bombs on Taiwanese cities. But how does Taiwan defend itself against a salami technique where China takes one small island after another with overwhelming force, and then surrounds the island with perhaps three dozen warships and a thousand missiles on the Chinese coast to protect the ships? How long will Taiwan be able to hold out? How long before raging Taiwanese hunger forces the government to negotiate with Beijing?

Any solutions?

Who am I? A fellow at some international think tank, or a senior academic at a renowned university? No, and no. Nevertheless …

Taiwan has spent a fortune in the last few decades on weaponry in the hope that they can do something when Chinese troops storm the beaches on Taiwan’s west and north coasts. There are the high-accuracy missiles that could wipe Shanghai and maybe one or two other Chinese cities off the map. (Let’s ignore for the moment what Chinese propagandists and an all-too-willing Western media will do with video clips of burning children in the rubble of a crushed apartment building in Shanghai. Not to mention cries of revenge among the Chinese population.) There are also ultra-modern warships, military drones, and brand-new F-16 fighter jets.

What value will this advanced military equipment have if Taiwan is encircled for months in extensive “military exercises”? Are all these fighter jets and warships and drones and missile systems going to convince international airlines not to cancel flights to Taipei? Will it convince shipping companies to take a chance to try and break through the blockade to deliver toilet paper and cat food and baking powder and olive oil?

The problem is that Taiwan, and the US government pushing the Taiwanese government to spend billions of dollars with US arms manufacturers, are preparing for a battle that will probably never be fought. Why would China risk thousands of Chinese troops, billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry, and possibly a few Chinese cities if they can succeed in their decades-long goal with blockades, encirclement, and the sabotage of infrastructure? Then the Chinese Red Army is also guilty of what the deputy head of the Taiwanese Ministry of Defence’s Political Warfare Bureau calls, “cognitive warfare, disinformation campaigns, and rumor spreading”, as well as “‘fake news’ or misinformation, mostly seeking to lower public trust in Taiwan’s government, [to] undermine public morale and build momentum for unification by force”.

Aljazeera reports that Taiwan has a defence budget of more than $20 billion for 2022. What percentage of this budget is allocated to the development of more agricultural land for food production? How much has been budgeted to teach city dwellers to plant vegetable gardens on the roofs of thousands of apartment buildings? How much money is spent on protecting infrastructure from sabotage? (Remember again: in March, a third of the island was without power and large parts without Internet for most of the day because someone made a mistake with a switch.) How much money is spent combatting cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns and other cognitive warfare?

The fact is, Taiwan is a David spending billions of dollars on a highly advanced slingshot with a pile of explosive stones in preparation for a fight against a Goliath who is not stupid, and who probably won’t do what David wants him to do so that he can sling a stone into his forehead. What will David do if Goliath unleashes dozens of wild dogs that surround him and cut him off from his food supply and other resources? What will David do when he has swallowed his last crumbs of bread with the last drops of water in his sachet? And Goliath still refuses to come closer so that David can hit him on the head with a stone as the story is supposed to go?

If Taiwan wants to continue to exist as an independent state in practice, they will have to start spending those billions of dollars much better than just filling the pockets of American arms manufacturers.

Afterthought: Thursday 22 September 2022

Taiwan has three options:

1) Declare independence, wait for China’s response, and hope for the best.

2) Contact Beijing and say: “Enough is enough. Let’s work out the technicalities of reunification.”

And 3) Adhere to strict status quo, meaning Beijing does not interfere, but Taiwan makes no declarations of independence nor does anything beyond practical arrangements, such as maintaining trade offices/embassies, to disturb the status quo – this includes no high-profile visits from American politicians.

As it is now, the Tsai Ing-wen administration is walking on the edge of formal independence, and if China protests, the Taiwan government accuses Beijing of violating the precarious peace.

______________________