Why China and the US are prepared to go to war over Taiwan | Rana Mitter

Rana the first question I wanted to ask you if you could just explain to our viewers why is Taiwan this small island off the coast of china such a point of contention the fate of Taiwan has been an issue now for the best part of three quarters of a century in other words since 1949 that was the year that Chairman Mao's Communist Party conquered the mainland of China they established the People's Republic of China but of course has been the government ever since but the one Province they didn't manage to conquer was the island province of Taiwan which of course lies just a couple of hundred miles off the east coast of China and essentially ever since then through the Cold War and through the post-cold war one of the issues of contention for the Chinese government in Beijing and Chinese Communist party is the question of whether or not they will be able to bring back what they regard as the last missing Province it's contentious though because much of the rest of the world has both political and security reasons for being concerned about the unification essentially Taiwan has changed very considerably in those 75 plus years it started off essentially as a rather autocratic dictatorship under Chiang Kai-shek the Chinese nationalist leader who fled the mainland in 1949 to go to the island with the Hope on his part that he would be able to get back and reconquer the mainland that of course never happened but during the 1980s and 90s Taiwan changed it turned into a democracy actually a very Consolidated very wide range in democracy Taiwan for instance today has a very free press it has uh freely functioning two-party or several party system uh it's actually the first place in Asia one of the few places first places in the world to have a minister in government who's trans so it's a place that has a very very broad public sphere that's very unlike the mainland which of course continues to be an authoritarian State fairly socially conservative even though it's actually run by a communist Society so there's a real values gap between the two that's one reason why unifying the two sides is difficult and the other of course is that the United States Japan a major Western allies in the Asia region fear that if Taiwan went back to China it would send to become a security asset of China in other words warships from the Chinese Navy Fleet could essentially Place themselves in Harbors on the island of Taiwan and essentially project themselves towards southeast Asia Japan the Pacific and Beyond so there's some of the issues that make the idea of bringing Taiwan and the mainland together which is what Beijing wants very contentious overall but it's also about resources isn't it aren't there um kind of uh resources and things to do with microchips that are found in Taiwan that are kind of making it it's kind of a that both the US and China are very interested in one of the major reasons that there is real concern in both the Western World and China actually about the fate of Taiwan in the present day is one particular commodity that wasn't even thought of just a few decades ago but now is Central to taiwan's place in the world that is semiconductor chips in other words a form of very very high Precision technology which sits at the heart of almost all of the Technologies which make everyday life possible in advanced parts of the economy uh smartphones automobiles um all sorts of Machinery in general which has moved away from the mechanical and takes uh the uses semiconductor chips as Central to operation now semiconductor chips of various sorts are made all around the world and all sorts of factories but taiwan's are special they are amongst the most if not the most high specification in terms of the sheer smallness of the size of what can be made and that's not just because of a particular Factory although a company called tsmc is very Central to this it's also because the supply chain which uses a particular type of lithography and also the scientific ecology that sits around the manufacturer of those chips in Taiwan itself that has proved very very hard to reproduce anywhere else the Chinese have tried the Americans have tried both are making some progress uh in Arizona for the Americans and on the mainland in Shanghai for for the Chinese but most assessors from outside still think there's a ways to go the Taiwan uh bottleneck or the Taiwan Nexus for production of semiconductors is currently unique in the world now if you were choosing an ideal geopolitical scenario deciding that a small politically vulnerable Island that is an unrecognized state in the wider world that is essentially in a danger zone for a geopolitical conflict might not be where you would choose to place the only factories in the world that can produce chips that are essential for the entire global economy but that is where the world has ended up and that's why actually both the US and China are wary about provoking a conflict in the region as the Taiwanese sometimes point out it's a sort of blackmail trigger for both of the countries that they have something to to do with obviously they're close to the Americans and not to the Chinese but the Chinese also have a lot of economic interests in Taiwan and vice versa and everyone knows that if the semiconductor supply chain were blown up if it stopped suddenly if it were hampered then the economy of China the US and the entire world would be deeply and negatively affected so Rana we're already seeing uh this militarization of the Taiwan strait between the US and China over Taiwan and it's being referred to as the next Cold War has this already begun well one of the figures who has put forward the idea that we are entering a new cold war is Henry Kissinger uh now 100 years old actually 100 years and I think two months now uh still going pretty strong he was actually just visiting Beijing the other day as the newspaper showed and he has talked about the US and China entering his words the foothills of a new Cold War now it's a bit of a mixed metaphor of course I'm not sure if a war can have a Foothill but I think we all know what what Kissinger means and because he is one of the three or four people who was instrumental in opening up the uh Cold War era relationship between the US and China he's still taken very seriously in China itself is it a new Cold War the phrase is heard more and more and I think one of the reasons it's used is that it's not something that gives that gives an easy alternative analogy or metaphor I mean we as human beings love metaphors we love analogies to try to explain what's going on Cold War it turns out is one of the most brilliant phrasings of the modern historical era um some Chinese Scholars uh like for instance professor wanchisor of Peking University have talked about it by flipping the uh flipping the terms and saying it's not a cold war it's a hot piece and that actually is an interesting way of thinking about it because it is clear that at the moment and let's hope permanently the United States and its allies which we shouldn't forget includes Japan one of the most important economies and militaries in the world um and China are not at War we very much hope they will not be at War at any point in in our lifetimes but there's no doubt the situation between them is not peace in the way that you know the board of Italy and Switzerland is is peaceful it's not that kind of uh of situation and so I think although there are some you know issues with that phrase too thinking about Professor Wang and other people he's one of the most probably there are others who've used this hot peace idea might be a way to get to what that metaphor is doing for us in other words trying to say what is the situation between the United States its allies and China is it a war well no not exactly is it a cold war well not exactly that either because tensions are ramping up and clearly the possibility for something more dangerous is there um but is it just peace and Harmony obviously that's not the uh not the case who do we think that the Allies will be for China because it's quite clear that you know the Allies for the United States and for Taiwan would be you know ocus the UK um in Australia um you know Singapore Japan but and it does seem like a long China's Coastline there is kind of a chain of of Western allies but I've not really seeing anyone that would come to defend China in that conflict China makes a big um China really stresses the fact that it doesn't do alliances in the way the United States does just to be clear what we mean by Alliance and it is often used as a sort of shorthand to mean you know people working together but actually there's quite a technical set of expectations and something like the NATO alliance or indeed the U.S Japan security Alliance involve Mutual deterrence in other words an attack on one is an attack on all that's become very evident when thinking about why countries in Europe want to be in NATO uh in the light of the Russian invasion of of Ukraine China has very few alliances of that sort and even those are slightly compromise the nearest thing is North Korea uh but for various reasons North Korea is rather unpredictable politics means that China is unlikely to want to take up that particular partnership um it also has what it calls deep and strategic Partnerships and relationships the word partnership is sometimes closer there aren't that many of those but one actually is a country that people sometimes forget which is Pakistan Pakistan has a very long-standing relationship with China uh some of China's generals military generals refer to Pakistan as China's Israel in other words the analogy for the United States and Israel so there are these sorts of relationships out there but the question you asked is whether or not this would actually be useful to China in terms of Confrontation I don't think there's any expectation almost none I think in China that if there were to be a conflict in the Asia Pacific over Taiwan or in the South China Sea where China continues to be indisputable at the moment it's legal not military dispute with Southeast Asian Neighbors about who actually gets to control the seas in that uh in that area uh or indeed the East China Sea where China has Maritime disputes with Japan as well I don't think that anyone in Beijing in military or civilian planning would expect that there would be a swift or easy um appeal to allies of any sort uh or Partners North Korea was not I think in most exercise it's going to come in the bit the one that people think about of course is Russia because Russia and China now have a much closer relationship but again I find it hard to see a scenario in which Russia actually actively brings military power to Bear to assist China in an East Asian crisis a they haven't got the capacity a lot of it's being used obviously at the moment on the Ukraine war and when we think about things that aren't being used so much there like the Pacific Fleet again my question would be how much having essentially uh declared a form of Undeclared conflict um on uh NATO Russia would also essentially want to take on us allies in the Pacific as well I just don't see it happening in that that sense so China's depending really on its own resources and they are formidable China has the second biggest military in the world has the second biggest economy in the world and also an economy that's not just large but through Supply chains is very very connected to many of the uh um uh Pathways of economic production around the world if you take many smartphones whatever the brand on the front even it's an American brand a European brand most of the components will either be Chinese or have come through China at some uh at some point beyond that China's Market continues to be very very attractive to many people and I think that um one of the things that China would seek to do is to try essentially and go to what it perceives as perhaps the more neutral or uncertain actors in a confrontation with the United States so go to the Europeans and say Germany do you really want to lose the market for Mercedes or BMW automobiles uh Japan uh you know do you really want your Toyota factories and your Matsushita factories in eastern uh China to basically be put out of out of contention and Southeast Asia which is an area of the world that is Keen to grow its economy and not get involved in anyone's Wars you know they're not pro-china but they're not really dying to get into a huge stouch with them uh with the US's uh um priorities at the front of that uh of that of that line so that all being the case I think China is calculating that if it can find the right moment and the right pivot it can use its economic power backed up by military Cloud to prevent other people getting involved yeah and I guess that's what makes what makes this conflict so much more different from you know people do compare it to the Cold War but that was a war of you know ideology really between you know communism and capitalism whereas this has a huge financial aspect to it which will certainly kind of change it changed the relations that's that's right I think it's much more real politique I mean some people compare the world we're in now to before World War one uh actually there's a great essay by the historian Margaret McMillan in the latest edition of the journal Foreign Affairs which people can find online and she's one of the greatest historians of that period um and has made some really interesting analogies um but that having been said of course every period is of course its own period uh we have issues to do with technology and Supply chains that weren't the case in the same way before World War One when the world was was very different but I think in this case it's worth noting that um there is this wider sense I think in China that China's rise is inevitable that there is this growing sense that China should have for the dominant role in East Asia in a way that they would argue the United States has done in the western atmosphere the term which means literally Monroe doctor doctrinism is something that you'll hear in or read in a lot of particular types of policy documents in China and their point is the Monroe Doctrine just reminded people that's basically the idea that's existed since the 19th century in the US that the US has the first right of influence um in terms of its own backyard that was part of the logic for instance for the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis Cuba was and he's an independent country but the United States still felt that it was its business if the Soviet Union decided they were going to build a missile base on Cuban territory just a few miles away so China uses a similar sort of argument when it comes to its own backyard not just the question of Taiwan but also the wider Asia region arguing that it should have power there the difference is that unlike the old Soviet Union there's no sense that there's a particular Chinese ideology certainly not a Chinese Communist ideology but China wants to spread and reproduce directly in these other countries that is different you'd say both from actually the United States and the USSR whether it's liberal democracy or um classic um kind of Soviet communism in the case of china say it's rather more an ideological tendency than ideology in other words China is mostly interested in economic influence first and foremost bringing and technological influence it would like countries to use Chinese Tech which bring them into the sort of Chinese world of norms and uh markets and so forth but if something happens to overthrow a government uh like in Burma two years ago when there was a coup uh China got on perfectly well with the robust uh and uh in some ways rather uh um majoritarian democratic government of all San tsuchi but China got on quite well with them but then when there was a coup and also tsuchi disappeared into prison China protest or say uh you know this is this is wrong they just say well you know it's up to the public to Myanmar as to what its government's going to be and they've been dealing perfectly happily with the military government since then I think it's a stretch to say that China had anything direct to do with that Myanmar coup I don't think they did um it was an internal issue but China's ideological position is that it's none of its business as to whether or not a country is an authoritarian dictatorship or a liberal democracy as long as they're working with China yeah I mean and therefore you can really understand why a lot of countries in the global South would kind of choose to align themselves with China now because I mean you know when they were aligning themselves with the United States it was on the understanding that you know you have to sign up to our Norms of liberal democracy and you know everything along those lines but then some of them could have argued that that's kind of hypocritical at some points of um U.S history and what they did abroad and the way that China's been doing it is kind of you know we're not going to place that on you we're just going to do economic deals to my understanding and you can't blame countries for for working with China for allowing themselves to China well I would say that these days both the Western Alliance the United States but other European countries too and China have both I think to some extent made the same mistake when dealing with sub-Saharan Africa Latin America and other parts of the emerging Global South which is that they've forgotten that in the last 20 30 years those countries owned publics now have a voice not all those countries are electoral democracies and of the Electoral democracies some of them are partial democracies or democracies that are not very stable we've just seen a coup in Niger in the last few days and that was a country that was moving towards electoral democracy president bazoom had actually been elected and then was um ousted in the coup but it's worth noting that actually you know 40 50 years ago Tales of military coups in Africa were a very frequent sort of occurrence actually the Niger situation is relatively um unusual because now if you think you know off the top of your head of the 50 countries of Africa how many have somewhat or significantly Consolidated democracies uh Kenya uh butini South Africa you know the list goes on or even ones where there's you know more fluidity but nonetheless Benin might be a good example of that phase there is still significant cynical significant uh Democratic structure there and when things don't happen when there aren't coups it doesn't get into the news you don't the headlines saying oh no coup in Senegal today you know Democratic structures continue to operate now that is in part because of the Norms that were engaged in by the World Bank by the IMF by a whole variety of western actors the difference being that in the last few decades more of the publics and the political Elites in sub-Saharan Africa and even Latin America too were brought into the conversation rather than being told you've got to do this that and the other I think China spotted an opportunity quite successfully in some places where clearly publics did feel resentful that they were you know being told what to do but always went too far in the other direction because China's tendency is to only go to the elite and say you're the president basically we'll shove a whole bunch of money away we'll build some roads and you know this is the return we expect on investment sometimes it works out okay and other times it doesn't um what I'd say is that one of the most notable elements of China's overseas investment strategy it's called the Belton Road initiative people have probably heard of this idea of it sort of spreading huge amounts of foreign investment over the last 10 years over much of the world is that it's really been reigned in largely because a couple of two or three years ago China started doing the accounts and realizing that actually lots of these Investments didn't didn't work out the story that's often been sometimes true but not always true is that the Chinese were trapping various countries into debt actually what was happening in many cases was the Chinese had gone into something thinking that they were actually going to make a bunch of money and then realizing that the project itself simply was never going to work out um many listeners to this podcast based in the UK you'll be aware of they'll be aware of something called hs2 the high-speed Railway which seems like it's never going to get built between Birmingham and London and huge amounts of money has been spent on it well the Chinese had their own version but it's not in China it's in East Africa it's the East Africa high-speed Railway between Kenya and Uganda and it's not between those two places because essentially the building workers has stopped because China realized that they could pour as much money as they wanted into it but it would take decades centuries to get the money back so that kind of more complicated story that isn't about China is a hero and U.S is the villain or you know China is trying to take over the world and you know the West has to stop them but actually bringing back the combination of understanding that the global South has its own voice in these questions and secondly people just sometimes screw up they invest in stuff that doesn't work out I mean goodness knows that happens in the west as well and a lot of the things where China hasn't done very well are a combination of actually not being terribly culturally sensitive in the places that they go you still don't get that many Chinese major investors who are really seriously learning indigenous languages of sub-Saharan Africa there are a few but not very many um and the realization that sometimes the reason that nobody else is investing in a particular entity is because it's not investable um explains quite a lot of what's been going on and I mean do you think that maybe the kind of the precarious state of U.S politics at the moment I I mean you were describing kind of what uh Africa would have looked like you know 50 years ago you know coup is happening all the time but in the US right now we're seeing a president that um you know yesterday was in an ex-president that yesterday was in court that has many serious allegations made up against him um he's been indicted and you know who um and there was a Insurrection on the capital I mean it's not really something that you would have expected to happen in the U.S even like 10 years ago that I guess it kind of plays into China's hand that this isn't exactly the most you know stable number one country anymore most observers of what's been happening in global politics for the last 10 to 15 years particularly those who are concerned that China uh is rising in influence and Power in the United Nations uh in transnational Society in terms of control of resources are also if they're objective noting that democracies have not been doing a good job in essentially advertising their own qualities in the last 10 to 15 years you mentioned the United States obviously that's been extremely up and down and we still don't know quite where that will will end up um uh but you know I think we could look at large parts of Europe um at the moment it's clear that populist politics is having a moment in a whole variety of places and even in places where you don't necessarily have um you know highly authoritarian parties in power the move towards a politics that is technically Democratic but actually in practice majoritarian is I think much more notable and that is helpful to China for the following reason majoritarian politics essentially says that if you get 50 of votes plus one you could do anything you want and most liberal democracy supposed illegal democracies are said that isn't all democracy about of course you have to win the vote uh or in some countries when a minority of the vote but nonetheless but then Civil Society where people have alternative viewpoints uh the ability to be able to protest uh the ability to essentially go about your business without being oppressed by the government you know if you uh take this particular position we won't give you a contract that sort of thing is also constitutive of what makes us successful and functioning democracy and most surveys suggest that in the world the Nordic countries have actually always scored very high in in those sorts of uh sorts of areas the open door that it gives China which has no intention of becoming a democracy and has made it very clear it's not going to be a liberal democracy of any sort at any point as long as the Chinese Communist Party are in in power is it enables them to say that the difference in political system is a difference of degree rather than of type China itself has actually started to push a line in its own terms it's actually quite a clever line which is that it doesn't matter whether a country happens to have an electoral democracy or a ruling party that's very technocratic as in China the main thing is that quotes it's a good government and of course your definition of what good government is is going to vary but China cross wants to move the argument away from the system of governance to the results of governance and then at least until recently they could point to a growing economy uh emergent middle class you know lots of people basically driving cars buying Apartments living a middle class lifestyle and say well this is what China can do what do you guys do post covid of course China finds it hard to tell that story and the story the last six months in China is a faltering economy which currently has high youth unemployment and it's not producing the kind of technically uh Superior jobs technologically enabled jobs that were promised essentially to today's youth so whether China can continue to fulfill the so-called Chinese dream is another question but the point is that the moment the Democratic world is not putting its best foot forward as it did during the height of the Cold War to suggest that actually democracy isn't just better in values terms it produces better results and it produces better governance that's a harder case to make now than it might have been say 30 or 40 years ago I mean I guess along that line of thinking would you say that you know we've already exited the period of a unipolar world would you say that now we're in a bipolar world with the US and China I think we're in a multi-polar world but I think I'd say two things first of all U.S power even at its highest in the 1990s was never as unipolar as some of particularly the American you know policymakers at that time wanted to put forward we know now that they were an awful lot of other emerging uh Powers just bubbling under the under the surface so that power was always was contingent and second I think it's important not to underestimate the United States now the United States still has uh I mean well let me put it this way one of the wiser sets of Chinese commentators who have been speaking in China over the last six seven years are the group of people usually a bit older they're usually based in universities rather than the government but they you know the new international relations very well they're all you know Chinese Patriots nationalists who might say in some cases um but they say one thing they say the mistake that a lot of young Chinese particularly on social media don't know the outside world very well are making is that they think the United States is down and out and it's not amongst the reasons and you know depending who it is they'll have different justifications but they can point out that the United States still has immensely powerful economic tools at its disposal it may be the case it may not it may be the case that China outdoes the US in 10 years 15 years time as the world's largest economy although at the moment it's not guaranteed that that will be the case but right now it's not China it is the US and there are reasons for uh for that beyond that the US and this would be sort of more me rather than you know necessarily Chinese thinkers but you know they can see the stats as well there are lots of things the United States has going for it that aren't reproduced in China uh it has despite the effects of certain politicians high levels of immigration which means high levels of skilled immigration Silicon Valley wouldn't exist without the fact that huge numbers of people from around the world have gone to centers of excellence there and then set up companies um if you look at the surnames of you know large numbers of the people who have run the tech majors in the US you get the story a lot of them of course Chinese that's not accidental either beyond that you also have the fact that despite the ups and downs and there are plenty of downs as well as up the United States is a country which genuinely allows its economy of scale to combine with local initiative you know California is as it is Texas as it is Massachusetts is as it is for a reason as well and well what Washington DC says has profound effects not least in terms of foreign policy it is also the case that there is flexibility within the system China has more than sometimes people think but it's not the case that they can be a simple delegation or derogation of powers to the regions in the way that actually you can see the United States has benefited from so in that sense I think the question almost moves from being you know the US versus China to being you know does China have a California or does China have a Texas um or you know what is it that Texas has that Sichuan doesn't or vice versa and looking at those sorts of granular questions I think will tell us more about what's going to happen in the late 2020s early 2030s than a simple National comparison right now for very good reasons I think the world is nervous about the possible confrontation that might exist in the Pacific I think it's worth noting that one of the if not the greatest problem the world has at the moment is that economics is proving rather the economics of the world has proven you know very difficult at the moment uh societies do not seem to be growing in the way that people expected climate change obviously is a major issue that is existential and needing to be dealt with right now there are huge numbers of motivations that mean that all the major actors in the world are likely if they look at the sort of spread of issues that they have to deal with to decide that military confrontation in the Pacific is an extremely bad idea I think that sensible heads in all parts of the world realize that this is the case and therefore it's worth noting that preventing that sort of Confrontation which would be absolutely devastating not just for the Pacific but actually for the wider world is a key geopolitical goal it's less exciting often to basically be involved in preventing something that doesn't hit the headlines as opposed to something hugely spectacular which does but over time I think policy makers in Beijing in Washington in Europe and Beyond as well as in southeast Asia do need to consider that to be an absolutely top priority brilliant I will stop the recording there thank you so much to Ron amida and thank you for watching if you want to hear more from Fantastic voices like ranamita Please Subscribe today thank you and I'll see you soon

Channel: Times Radio

Views: 54,996

Keywords: taiwan, taiwan china war, china, china and taiwan, china taiwan, taiwan china, china taiwan war, taiwan vs china war, china taiwan tension, china vs taiwan, taiwan china tensions, china's warning to the us over taiwan, us china taiwan, taiwan vs china, the us is preparing for war over taiwan, china taiwan news, china taiwan tensions, china to launch war on taiwan, taiwan china news, china taiwan relations, why relations between china and taiwan are so tense

Id: Tf0QdFUrjC8

Length: 30min 21sec (1821 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2023