China is putting pressure on Taiwan with naval blockades. If they last longer, it would have devastating consequences. But the country is also threatened with danger from within.
China’s armed forces have surrounded Taiwan. Beijing dictator Xi Jinping wants to demonstrate once again that he can take over the island at any time if he wants.
The new president of the small country, Lai Ching-te, was just inaugurated on Monday. The democratically elected head of state emphasized that Taiwan does not want any changes to the existing relationship with the People’s Republic. At the same time, Lai also emphasized that the Taiwanese army is always ready to defend democratic Taiwan.
Xi Jinping claims that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic. However, this is not true because the island was never controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Since the summer of 2022, Xi has been serious about his threats and has been staging military blockades like the most recent one at regular intervals.
China can thus interrupt the island state’s trade and also prevent energy supplies from reaching the island. Taiwan needs this to keep the energy-intensive production of its computer chips going.
A full 90 percent of the latest, most efficient semiconductors that are used in refrigerators, smartphones and cars for the global market are manufactured in Taiwan. If Beijing blocks the island for more than 14 days, this would have devastating effects on the entire global economy, as Taiwan would then run out of electricity.
Half of global freight traffic also passes through the Taiwan Strait, which separates the democratic country from the Beijing dictatorship. If Xi were to position his army there, nothing would work.
In general, Beijing claims that the entire South and East China Seas are Chinese waters. This is not correct, even under international maritime law. Xi therefore constantly provokes not only Taiwan militarily, but also the Philippines, South Korea and Japan. The dictatorship has also clashed several times with India and Australia because of its desire for imperial conquest.
Xi has created a good moment for his attack, as the pro-China camp in Taiwan is currently trying to push through a law in parliament that could give Beijing the opportunity to manipulate the island.
President Lai is a member of the Democratic Progressive Party, which Taiwanese trust to defend their country against the People’s Republic. When it comes to domestic issues, however, the nationalist Kuomintang party, which is traditionally considered very China-friendly, scored points in the January elections. Its last president, Ma Ying-jeou, visited the People’s Republic during the election campaign to underline his party’s closeness to the Beijing dictatorship.
Instead of focusing on domestic politics, however, the Kuomintang is making common cause with the Taiwan People’s Party, which is also pro-Chinese: it wants to expand the power of parliament over the government and public administration in order to put pressure on the government in the interests of Beijing. to be able to exercise public administration and, ultimately, perhaps even the independent courts.
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The law should neither be read out nor discussed in Parliament. There were scuffles in the plenary chamber and demonstrations in front of parliament involving several thousand people.
This is not the first time that the Taiwanese have had to defend themselves against the Kuomintang in this way. Already in 2014, the party tried to push through a trade agreement with Beijing in a similar way that would have enabled the Chinese Communist Party to sooner or later dominate Taipei economically and thus force it to give up politically.
This led to the Sunflower Protest Movement, at the end of which the Kuomintang lost the presidency and has not been able to regain it since.
With the support of the nationalist camp from within and the pressure his military is building up from outside, Xi hopes to wear down the Taiwanese. In surveys, up to 85 percent of the people say that they want to keep their democracy and their freedom and are prepared to fight for it.
If it can be prevented, Xi would also refrain from using armed force and a long war. It is therefore to be expected that he will increasingly rely on blockades of the island.
For him, these also have the advantage that they do not represent a declaration of war and so Taiwan’s allies, especially the USA and Japan, cannot intervene without risking starting a war against China themselves.
Alexander Görlach is an honorary professor of ethics at Leuphana University in Lüneburg and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. After a stay in Taiwan and Hong Kong, he focused on the rise of China and what it means for democracies in East Asia in particular. From 2009 to 2015, Alexander Görlach was also the publisher and editor-in-chief of the debate magazine The European, which he founded. Today he is a columnist and author for various media. He lives in New York and Berlin.