Oxon_Daddy t1_je9vho8 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 1:56 PM

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Taiwan's Tsai arrives in US to warnings from China of 'serious confrontation' by benh999

To be clear:

(a) Taiwan is an independent state, not a quasi-independent state.

(b) The only reason that any other state maintains the sham that is the "One China" policy is because China threatens to sever diplomatic and trade relations if they don't.

You do not authentically imply that a state is not independent because you are coerced into an evasive policy or you maintain it only to keep the peace.

(c) The only reason that China has not used military force to annex Taiwan in the past is because it did not have the capabilities to do so; it is beginning to believe that it might have that capability in the near future, which is why the prospect of an invasion is becoming more likely.

It is not because of Taiwan's importance as a producer of semiconductors; China wanted to annex Taiwan before it became a dominant manufacturer of semiconductors.

(d) The US and other states take seriously China's intention to invade Taiwan; very few serious commentators think (as your comment implies) that there is no (or even a very low) risk of invasion over the medium-term time horizon.

Commentators take seriously Xi Jinping's express direction to the PLA that it should be able to invade Taiwan by 2027.

(e) Other countries were "cozying up" to Taiwan long before it became a major manufacturer of microchips; most democratic states recognised Taiwan as the legitimate government in mainland China until the rapprochement between the US and the CCP in 1972.

The US and its allies continue to support Taiwan because it is a vibrant democratic state with liberal values in South East Asia that a ruthless authoritarian state wants to crush; it is not "because microchips" as you have claimed.

That it is a major manufacturer of microchips only increases its importance; but the US and its allies would defend it against Chinese aggression even if it wasn't (as the US did in the 1990s).

cookingboy t1_jeafg0l wrote on March 30, 2023 at 4:16 PM

> The US and its allies continue to support Taiwan because it is a vibrant democratic state with liberal values

I agree with almost everything you said except the above. The biggest reason of supporting Taiwan is because it’s a strategic counter-balance against China.

The U.S has supported Taiwan ever since 1949, but Taiwan was a brutal military dictatorship back then ruled by KMT. We supported them because it was the Cold War and they were anti-Communists.

Taiwan didn’t have their first democratic presidential election until the 90s.

Same for South Korea. We supported them because they were anti-Communists, not because they were a liberal democracy. SK didn’t become democratic until much later after the Korean War.

Now Taiwan being a liberal democracy gives us one more reason to support them, but it wasn’t the original driving factor.

Things like “we support democracy” is what the US government uses to sell our policies to the public, but history shows that we care most and foremost for American interests. Afterall we’ve overthrown democracies to install pro-US dictatorships and even today we are ally with countries like Saudi Arabia.