Taiwan is a fascinating experiment in terms of democratization. You've got a relatively liberal society. One way that people
have seen that globally is that it's the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. It's an island of less
than 24 million people, and yet its economy is close to one of the top 20 in the world today. But this wealthy, democratic island is not considered an
independent country by Beijing. China has long viewed
Taiwan as its lost territory and threatened to unify with it by force. Under Beijing's pressure, only 15 states in the world
recognize Taiwan today, down from 23 in 2016. And one key country is not on that list: the United States. The U.S. is Taiwan's biggest ally. Although there are no
formal diplomatic relations between the two. The U.S. is Taiwan's
biggest arms supplier, has close economic ties with the island and is likely to defend it. We are going to hold China accountable to follow the rules. So how has Taiwan become the most volatile issue between the world's two greatest powers? Up to the late 19th century, Taiwan, then known as Formosa, passed through the rule of
Dutch and Spanish colonizers, its aboriginal peoples
and Chinese dynasties. In 1895, the Qing dynasty
of China lost Taiwan to Japan after a
humiliating military defeat. Taiwan was then ruled by the Japanese for the following 50 years. Japan wanted to make
Taiwan into a model colony, using it as an example to
persuade other Asian nations to join the Japanese empire. They raised living standards, they improved education, they improved health and
built a lot of infrastructure. So that 50 years later, Taiwan was actually one of the more developed parts of the region. After World War II, Taiwan was returned to the control of the Chinese government, at that point, the Republic of China. The Republic of China rapidly
lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communist Party of China, and as a result ended up on
Taiwan as a regime in exile with very few resources,
a lot of refugees, a very poor population
struggling to survive. Taiwan relied heavily
on U.S. economic aid, but by the middle of the 1960s, most of that aid was phased
out as the U.S. wanted Taiwan to develop its own economy. So Taiwan changed its strategy, moving from an import substitution policy, which replaced foreign
imports with homemade goods, to an export-oriented economy. And Taiwan moved very, very quickly towards exporting very cheap, mostly consumer goods
to the United States. And as a consequence, over
the next 20 to 30 years, Taiwan's economy boomed. So beginning of the 1980s, the government in Taiwan started to think how do we take the next step
in our economic development? And they identified among
many areas semiconductors as a critical technology. So that really took off in
the 1990s with the growth of Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Company that eventually, you know, now today is an absolutely crucial company for any company that's making technology. You know, their chips are in smartphones, they're in tablets, they're in computers, they're in games consoles
and they're in cars as well. Anything that you need chips for, largely you're having to come to TSMC. And so this by extension puts Taiwan in a fairly strong position
that it is a key node in the tech supply chain globally. And so it is a really,
really valuable partner for every single country in the world. Alongside this economic shift, Taiwan's political landscape
also changed dramatically. Under the rule of the Chinese
Nationalist Party, or KMT, for four decades Taiwan
was an authoritarian regime until the end of martial
law in the late 1980s. Then Taiwan gradually
transitioned to democracy. The first direct presidential
elections took place in 1996, followed by several
peaceful transfers of power. So the Democratic Progressive Party is the current party that governs Taiwan. They were a party that
came out of this movement of activists pushing for more democracy in Taiwan in the 1970s. And their fundamental stance is that Taiwan is already
an independent country. But this isn't the same stance held by Beijing. So from the People's Republic of China, the PRC's perspective, Taiwan remains the last piece
of an unfinished civil war. It's an illegitimate regime. It's a breakaway territory that needs to be unified with the motherland. The Chiang Kai-shek regime won a reprieve in June 1950
when the Korean War broke out. The United States then
stepped in to prevent a final Chinese Communist Party, a CCP-led invasion of
the island of Taiwan. The United States has
been there ever since as the guarantor of Taiwan's security. Despite this guarantee of security, in 1979, the U.S. broke ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan, and established them with the People's Republic of China in Beijing. Here things get complicated. The United States, in
one of our communiques with the People's Republic of China, acknowledged the PRC position
that Taiwan was part of China. But the United States also did not accept the PRC claim to Taiwan. That has been our position ever since. And so, in effect, the U.S. views Taiwan's
status as undetermined. But even after 1979, they've maintained informal
relations with Taiwan and continue to invest here, continue to support the economy and most importantly, continued
to sell arms to Taiwan. With the U.S. in the middle, China and Taiwan have avoided
war for over seven decades, but tensions between the two sides have risen in recent years. Emerging as a superpower
on the world stage, China has become more assertive in its claims of sovereignty over Taiwan. While most of the Taiwanese
prefer maintaining the status quo for now, many young people favor overt
independence for Taiwan. The young people have
really been at the heart of this political transformation
we're seeing in Taiwan over the past eight, nine years, when they started pushing back against this economic integration
between China and Taiwan that started under former
President Ma Ying-jeou. One of the best examples was the Sunflower Movement that
broke out in March of 2014. This movement was led
mostly by college students opposed to negotiations with Beijing over a free-trade agreement. The movement occupied
the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's parliament, for more than three weeks in
order to block that parliament from considering this trade
agreement and voting on it. So in effect, the Sunflower Movement protesters blocked further economic integration
with mainland China. Taiwanese podcasters Kylie Wang and Ken Young joined some
of the rallies and marches, and started their popular
news show during the movement. We have mixed feelings towards China. Yeah.
Because on one hand, I know that a lot of young
people want to explore the big market in China. Because China has just
much more opportunity, and sometimes even
better salaries nowadays. Yeah, especially for those who
just graduated from college. On the other hand, China just keeps on bullying us. We just don't like what they're doing. We want to have economic growth, but we do not want to
sacrifice our economic growth with our freedom of speech,
with our independence, with our democracy. Since the Sunflower Movement, the China-friendly KMT party has seen its polling numbers decline steeply while the DPP leader, Tsai Ing-wen, won the presidential elections in 2016 and was re-elected in 2020. So she has, as her bottom line effectively that Taiwan is an
independent sovereign nation. Her stance is that we're willing to talk but only as equals. And that is obviously
a position that Beijing is unwilling to accept. China cut official communications with Taiwan in 2016 and stopped individual travel permits to the island in 2019. It's also upped the rhetoric
on taking control of Taiwan and increased military maneuvers, all of which is a concern for the U.S. Taiwan is by far the
most likely issue to draw the United States and China
into a direct military conflict. I should say I don't think
the likelihood of that is particularly high still, but it overshadows all
other potential points of friction in the
U.S.-China relationship. If China and Taiwan did
eventually go to war, there could be a devastating cost to human life and industry. Even if China manages, they could spend years rebuilding Taiwan and struggle to integrate
a hostile population. So it would be an incredibly dangerous, messy affair. The attempt to invade a fortified island is always going to be an
incredibly difficult one. So there's a very good reason
they have not attempted to take Taiwan by military force. It's because they're
not sure they can do so. And so it would be a
really disastrous event for everybody involved. And there's a very good
chance that other democracies in this region, certainly
Japan, maybe Australia, would get drawn in as well. Put quite simply, it's in everybody's
best interest right now not to force the issue and to push it off for another few years or
maybe even a few decades. But the unification
would signal to the world that it's China, not the U.S., that's the new dominant
power in the region. Being able to bring
Taiwan into the PRC fold would obviously be a huge achievement for any Chinese leader. And it's largely seen as
being as one of his ambitions to achieve before he steps
down, whenever that may be. Taiwan's future really depends on if our allies would take China seriously. No, I would say it depends on the attitude of the western countries towards China. Yeah. Because if the Western
countries, for example, the U.S. starts to see Taiwan as an important geopolitical ally, then Taiwan could become
a beacon of democracy in the Chinese-speaking world. If not, the western countries would like to see China growing over
the influence over the world, then... They can just let China be. Yeah, and we will be in real risk. Yeah, Taiwan might be in real risk. The Trump administration
showed strong support for Taiwan by providing more weapons, sending high-level officials to visit and changing the law to make interactions between the two sides much easier. In June, a U.S. delegation visited Taipei and announced plans to
donate 750,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines to help alleviate its shortage of shots. Since Biden has taken office, the people he's put in
place so far at least have repeated the Trump
administration's position on Taiwan, and have actually taken
quite strong stands in favor of that approach to Taiwan, ignoring or pushing back
against Beijing's objections. But obviously we'll have
to see over the next four, potentially eight years to
see how strong that support for Taiwan actually is.
TSMC is important to the US government, saved you 13 minutes of cringe
Taiwan’s strategic position is what Americans need but the Japanese desperately needs the most. If China completely controls Taiwan, then Japan will definitely become China’s bitch or the poorest country in the world (if it goes full pro-West).
If a war goes hot the literal first thing that goes is TSMC. It is the softest of soft targets. Simply losing power for a day with warning means millions in chips must be scrapped and equipment has to be warmed up again. Imagine actual weapons.
There's no purpose in keeping it around either, since the equipment is useless if not maintained, and the best resource of TSMC is not in their physical plant or any individual talented scientists but their process innovation in cutting wafer costs, improving wafer yields and having a close relationship with ASML (which can't be captured).
TSMC is a military threat because it produces certain military electronics and was founded by the Taiwanese government through the Industrial Technology Research Institute.
The US doesn't care about Taiwanese people. Here's how it will go:
TSMC will build its plant in the US. Then we will suddenly see copy-cat plants but made by Americans. Then the US will have no need for Taiwan, and ultimately the Taiwanese people will suffer.
sometimes (a lot of the time) i just wish that continental drift and geology occurred just a bit differently and resulted in no taiwan island next to the mainland.
Ever since ROC was kicked out of the UN, the US used strategic ambiguity to define US and Taiwan relationship, one can clearly see this unstable political situation was engineered from the beginning.
The issue is as US influence in the region wanes, how will the Strait Issue be resolved.
Will the U.S. make a stink about like the UK when they were kicked out of HK. Or will it be like the USSR, where US tweets to their satellite counties they are on their own now.