Geopolitics of the Fourth Taiwan Crisis

On April 15, 1959, at the 16th meeting of the Supreme State Council, Mao Zedong told the delegates a story called ‘The Cocky Scholar Sitting at Night’. A young scholar was studying in his room. A ghost appeared from the window with his long tongue. It wanted to scare the scholar. But the scholar took his ink brush, painted his face “as dark as Zhang Fei,” the dreaded third-century Han dynasty general, and sticking out his tongue looked back at the ghost. At last the ghost disappeared. Mao tells this story to explain that he had ordered shelling a year earlier on the Kinmen and Matsu islands, located off the mainland, but ruled by Taiwan. The ghost in Mao’s story was the United States. “Never be afraid of ghosts. The more you fear, the harder it is to survive,” he said.

a brief History

China’s response US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan August 2 reminds one of Mao’s story. its unprecedented military exercise Repeated threats to use force for further reunification around the island show that China’s views Taiwan issue And America’s role in this hasn’t changed a bit over the years, even though it never managed to scare off the “ghosts” and has had several tactical retreats in the past. Mao wanted to be the leader who achieved “national integration”. But he knew it was practically impossible for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which didn’t even have a proper navy to cross the Taiwan Straits and re-capture the island in the early 1950s. In addition, US President Harry S Truman’s decision to send the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet to the strait created a buffer between the Communist-ruled mainland and Kuomintang-occupied Taiwan. In 1954 and again in 1958, he could open the Kinmen and Matsu islands, triggering the First and Second Taiwan Straits Crisis. However, taking the island by force remained a distant dream.

By the time China began building military capability (including an atomic bomb), the region’s geopolitical dynamics had begun to change. In the 1970s, facing the Soviet problem, China’s focus shifted to improving its relations with the US and, later, its own economic development. The Taiwan issue was shelved without compromising on the goal of integration. The issue would resurface in 1995 when Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui visited Cornell University in the US, China began military exercises and missile tests in the strait, triggering the Third Strait Crisis. But US President Bill Clinton responded by sending American aircraft carriers across the strait, ultimately forcing Beijing to de-escalate tensions. For China, it was another crude reminder of the gap between its objectives and real strength. The “ghost” was still the king of the Taiwan Straits.

new normal

Over the past 27 years, the regional situation has changed dramatically. If the Soviet Union brought China and the US closer in the second half of the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s successor state, the Russian Federation, is today not only one of China’s closest allies, but also a power that militarily challenges America. Post-Cold War security architecture in Europe led. If Mr. Clinton had sent aircraft carriers across the Taiwan Strait in response to China’s exercises in the 1990s, US President Joe Biden would not have dared to do so today without considering the possibility of a military conflict with the world’s largest navy. do. The sharpest manifestation of these changes was the Fourth Taiwan Straits Crisis, sparked by China’s response to Ms Pelosi’s recent visit to the island.

Mr Biden has said repeatedly in recent months that the US would come to Taiwan’s rescue if attacked. Each time Mr. Biden remarked, the White House issued a statement explaining that America’s policy of strategic ambiguity (due to being vague on the question of whether the US would come to Taiwan’s defense) had not changed. But Mr. Biden’s repeated statements show that US policy is becoming less and less clear-cut. Against this already tense backdrop, China witnessed the visit of an American leader (who is second in the line of presidential succession) to an island, which it said was an apparent act of instigating it as a separate province. sees as.

For China, the “ghost” continues to violate the status quo. And it reacted by setting a new normal. Its warships and jets breached the midline of the Taiwan Strait, rendering it meaningless. The exercise was conducted in territorial waters and airspace claimed by Taiwan. Chinese missiles flew over the island. As Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said, “China has openly declared its ownership of the Taiwan Strait.”

China sees Taiwan as the last remnant of its “century of humiliation” that began with its defeat in the First Opium War (1839–42). And the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants the island back for historical, political and geopolitical reasons. Historically, the party has always viewed Taiwan as part of China. It was a part of Imperial China before becoming a Japanese colony in 1895. When Japan was defeated in World War II, Taiwan was returned to the Nationalist Republic of China, ruled by the Kuomintang. Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang supporters fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to the Communists in the mainland. Since then, Taiwan has remained a self-governing island, while “national reunification” has been one of the most important promises and objectives of the CCP.

Politically, no Chinese leader, even Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader after Mao, can compromise on the question of Taiwan without harming his authority, career and legacy. In contrast, Mr. Xi, who is expected to get an unusual third term at the 20th Party Congress later this year, would like to go down in history as a leader who achieved what even Mao could not.

on hegemony

Geopolitically, Taiwan is central to China’s great power ambition. No country can become a global superpower without establishing regional hegemony. The Americas are protected by the world’s two largest oceans – the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean – and have successfully dominated the Western Hemisphere. The Soviet Union had enjoyed hegemony in the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. In contrast, China, despite its military capabilities, is a closed naval power in a crowded neighborhood. And if it loses Taiwan forever, which is just 180 kilometers from its mainland, China’s efforts to establish territorial hegemony will be further complicated. Therefore, it seeks control of the island not only to fulfill a historical promise (for political gains for the leader or, as many have pointed out, to take control of global semiconductor supply), but also to maintain its geo-scheme as a great Political stature also has to be put aside. Power in the Western Pacific. The question is whether China thinks the time has come to take the risk to meet its objectives.

This does not mean that military action will be easy for China. Taiwan has been out of control since 1949. Even if China takes over Taiwan, it will be challenging to keep it under its thumb given the island’s topography and nationalist groups. And there is no geographic proximity to Taiwan from the mainland, which could continue to pose security challenges. Furthermore, any strategic miscalculation would prove counterproductive to China’s position in the region, as has been the case with audacious summit powers in the past. But the counterarguments are equally persuasive.

China feels the strategic environment around Taiwan has shifted in its favour, with a window of opportunity to pursue the move as the US is caught in a triangular entanglement – ​​its failures in the Muslim world, Russia in Europe His desire to defeat and a strategy to prevent China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific. Once the new Cold War framework is in place and Taiwan emerges as a front line, it will be as difficult for China to regain the island as it was for German or Korean unification under the Communists. This is what is making the Fourth Taiwan Straits Crisis the most dangerous.

stanly.johny@thehindu.co.in