Why Taiwan is a hot spot for the U.S.-China war
Taiwan's status has long been highly controversial and potentially explosive. However, in the four decades since the United States and China established diplomatic relations in 1979, tensions over Taiwan have largely been regulated and contained through delicately balanced arrangements.
Since the Trump administration, these agreements, diplomatic protocols and tacit agreements have been increasingly torn apart. The most egregious move so far has been a provocative leak this month via the Wall Street Journal that US Special Forces are in Taiwan, training troops for over a year.
In 1979, the United States, as part of its agreements with China, withdrew all its armed forces from Taiwan, severed diplomatic relations and its military treaty with Taipei. The deployment of American troops in Taiwan is a flagrant violation of what has been the status quo for decades and calls into question the foundation of diplomatic relations between the United States and China.
To understand the great danger posed by the deliberately inflammatory actions of the Biden administration, it is necessary to study historical prerequisites for this.
To justify its threatening military build-up in the region and fueling this sensitive hot spot, the United States portrays Taiwan as a thriving democracy facing the growing threat of Chinese aggression.
In fact, American imperialism has never had the slightest concern about democracy in Taiwan or anywhere else in the region. After Japan's defeat in World War II in 1945, the United States supported the expansion of Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang dictatorial regime. In October 1945, the US Navy deployed Kuomintang troops to Taiwan, which was a Japanese colony after China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895.
The brutal Kuomintang regime
The Kuomintang administration under General Chen Yi was brutal from the start, as the escalating economic crisis inflamed relations between local Taiwanese and newcomers from the mainland. The shooting of a civil protest on February 28, 1947 provoked unrest throughout the island, which was brutally suppressed by the Kuomintang military. The estimated death toll ranges from 18 to 000.
Taiwan's brutal repression was part of a broader crisis of the Chiang Kai-shek regime that was riddled with corruption. He used the measures of the police state against the growing opposition. After the victory of the CCP in 1949 and the proclamation of the People's Republic of China, the Kuomintang and supporters fled to Taiwan.
The mass exodus of roughly two million people included the Kuomintang leadership, soldiers, officials, and a wealthy business elite. China's gold and foreign exchange reserves, as well as many national cultural values were exported to Taiwan. The Kuomintang government proclaimed Taipei the provisional capital of the Republic of China (ROC).
Taiwan today, separated from China, is the creation of American imperialism.
After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, then President Truman placed the island under the protection of the Seventh fleet USA. The Kuomintang could position itself as a government in exile for all of China only with the support of the United States.
Just as the United States supported dictatorial and autocratic regimes throughout Asia, it fully supported the Kuomintang dictatorship, which declared martial law in May 1949 that lasted nearly four decades until 1987. The Kuomintang ruthlessly suppressed all political opposition. According to one estimate, this resulted in the imprisonment or execution of 140 people for alleged pro-communist sentiments.
US-backed Kuomintang provocations against Beijing, including an air and naval blockade of the Chinese coast, were a constant source of tension. Taipei controlled and continues to control a number of fortified islets just a few kilometers from mainland China and close to major Chinese cities.
In the 1950s, two major crises erupted.
In August 1954, the Kuomintang deployed tens of thousands of troops on the islands of Matsu and Qingmen and began building military installations, to which the People's Liberation Army (PLA) responded by shelling Qingmen. In the midst of the crisis, the US Congress authorized the use of military force against China, and the Pentagon advocated nuclear strikes.
The second crisis in the Taiwan Strait erupted in August 1958 after the shelling of Matsu and Qingmen and clashes between Kuomintang and PLA forces near Dongding Island.
Air and sea skirmishes and artillery firefights continued for three months, with hundreds of casualties on both sides. The United States strengthened the armed forces of the Kuomintang, escorted the Kuomintang naval vessels to the besieged islands, and the Pentagon again raised the question of the need to use nuclear weapons.
The hostile confrontation between China and the Kuomintang regime in Taiwan, supported by the US military, continued throughout the 1960s.
Rapprochement of Washington with Beijing
US President Nixon's visit to China in February 1972 marked a major shift in geopolitical relations. The trip was announced the previous year based on secret talks that Nixon's national security adviser Henry Kissinger had with senior CCP leaders. Nixon and Kissinger calculated that the United States could use the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s and sharp tensions between Moscow and Beijing to create a quasi-alliance with China against the Soviet Union.
Nixon's meeting with Chinese leader Mao Zedong and the publication of the joint Shanghai communiqué paved the way for diplomatic relations. It was a reactionary partnership in which the CCP regime supported right-wing US allies such as the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile and the repressive Iranian regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The pact also opened the door for China's reintegration into the global capitalist market as a platform for cheap labor.
Washington's sharp turn had far-reaching consequences for the Kuomintang dictatorship in Taiwan. Taiwan's status was a central issue in the protracted negotiations that eventually led to official diplomatic relations between the United States and China in 1979. The CCP insisted that the United States recognize "One China" with Taiwan as part of China and sever its military and diplomatic ties with Taipei.
In the Shanghai communiqué, the United States acknowledged:
“All Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait claim that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of China. The United States government does not dispute this position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan issue by the Chinese themselves. " In addition, it confirmed "the ultimate goal of the withdrawal of all American troops and military facilities from Taiwan."
In 1979, when diplomatic relations were established, Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei, withdrew its troops and canceled its military treaty - in fact, albeit informally, recognizing One China with the CCP regime in Beijing as the legitimate government.
At the same time, the US Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which opposed any attempt by Beijing to reunite Taiwan by force, authorized the sale of "defensive" military weapons to Taiwan, and established the American Institute in Taiwan through which informal communications could be maintained.
Washington has adopted a position of "strategic ambiguity" regarding the conflict between China and Taiwan - that is, it has not given guarantees as to whether it will intervene. This was aimed at curbing both Chinese aggression and Taiwan's provocative actions.
The end of the Kuomintang dictatorship
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the United States provided economic assistance to Taiwan, providing financial assistance, investment, and access to the American market, which contributed to its state-backed industrialization.
In the 1970s, Taiwan was the fastest growing economy in Asia after Japan. With the turn towards globalized manufacturing since the late 1970s, Taiwan has become one of the main platforms for low-cost labor in Asia. Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore - the four Asian tigers - were seen as a new model of economic development.
The dictatorship of the Kuomintang was based on a nationally regulated economy that was associated with corruption associated with close friends of the Kuomintang. Under US pressure, the regime began to open up its economy in the 1980s, privatizing state corporations and removing government economic regulation - steps that have weakened the political base of support for the Kuomintang.
Political opposition remained illegal under martial law, but increasingly protested against the regime's anti-democratic measures. Taiwan's rapid economic growth also led to a huge growth in the working class, which became increasingly militant and went on a wave of strikes demanding better wages and working conditions.
In response, the Kuomintang allowed a series of limited democratic reforms. A bourgeois political opposition led by indigenous Taiwanese elites was able to form the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 1986, and martial law was lifted the following year.
The main legislatures - the Yuan Legislature and the National Assembly - were filled with unelected Kuomintang representatives from the provinces of mainland China on the basis of the fiction that the government still represented all of China. In 1991, full elections were held for the reformed National Assembly, and in 1992 for the reformed Legislative Yuan. The first direct elections for president and vice president took place in 1996.
Taiwan's status, which is inextricably linked to relations with mainland China, increasingly dominates Taiwanese politics.
President Li Ten Hui initiated limited democratic reforms. Although he was a member of the Kuomintang, he strove to promote Taiwanese identity in order to counter the DPP's influence and present Taiwan as a separate state.
Lee challenged long-standing US diplomatic protocols against high-level Taiwanese officials' visits to the United States by accepting an invitation from Cornell University in 1995 to deliver a speech, "Taiwan Democratization Experience." While the Clinton administration rejected his visa application, Congress supported the visit.
For its part, the CCP regime under Deng Xiaoping promoted the reunification of Taiwan on the basis of a "one country, two systems" formula - that is, Taiwan would retain a significant degree of autonomy in politics, government and economy.
Beijing was hostile to any proposal for Taiwan to declare formal independence and viewed Lee's visit to the United States as a violation of Washington's 1979 commitments.
The visit triggered the third Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-1996, highlighting the danger of deliberate violations by the United States of its accord with China.
Beijing has announced missile tests and a military build-up in Fujian, a Chinese province adjacent to Taiwan across the Taiwan Strait. The Clinton administration responded with the largest display of military power in Asia since the Vietnam War, sending two carrier battle groups into waters off Taiwan and sending one across the narrow Taiwan Strait.
Beijing retreated.
The polarization of Taiwanese politics between the pro-independence DPP and the China-oriented Kuomintang is rooted in the island's economy.
On the one hand, the lack of diplomatic recognition is an obstacle to Taiwan's entry into international bodies, including economic institutions, and hampers economic and trade relations. The 2000 election of the DPP's first president, Chen Shui-bian, who advocated greater Taiwan autonomy, heightened tensions with Beijing, which warned that it would respond to any formal declaration of Taiwan's independence by force.
On the other hand, the restoration of capitalism in China since 1978 has opened up tremendous economic opportunities for Taiwanese corporations. Taiwanese businesses invested $ 118 billion in China between 1991 and early 2020, and cross-strait trade in 2019 was $ 149,2 billion.
The Kuomintang is seeking to facilitate relations with China. Under President Ma Ying-jeou, who was elected in 2008, a trade agreement opened up direct flights and freight traffic between Taiwan and China, and economic relations have strengthened.
In 2015, the first ever meeting of the presidents of Taiwan and China, Ma and Xi Jinping, took place in Singapore. Both held the so-called 1992 consensus that the CCP and the Kuomintang agree that there is one China, but still disagree with who rules it.
US escalates tensions over Taiwan
Obama's election as president in 2009 marked a sharp turn towards confrontation with China, reflecting Democratic criticism of the previous Bush administration for ignoring Asia in its wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
While the "pivot to Asia" was officially announced in 2011, the Obama administration launched a large-scale offensive aimed at strengthening the US position in Asia, undermining the Chinese economy and strengthening the US military presence and alliances throughout the region.
By 2020, 60 percent of the US naval and air forces were to be stationed in the Indo-Pacific region, in line with the Pentagon's naval war strategy with China.
The Obama administration has deliberately escalated tensions in the South China Sea by claiming that it has a "national interest" in low-key territorial disputes between China and its neighbors. It made no attempt to end the escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula over North Korea's nuclear programs. At the same time, however, Obama avoided destabilizing the status quo with Taiwan, recognizing its central role in US relations with China and its potentially explosive consequences.
Trump had no such doubts.
Even before his official inauguration, Trump responded provocatively to a phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Yin Wen, who took office in mid-2016. Although the phone call was nominally organized to congratulate Trump on his election victory, he violated established protocols.
The Trump administration included a number of senior officials with longstanding ties to Taiwan and deeply hostile to China, including its first chief of staff, Raines Priebus, and White House trade advisor Peter Navarro. Under Trump, the United States increased arms sales to Taiwan, increased the number of US warships passing through the Taiwan Strait, supported Taiwanese President Tsai's anti-China stance, and increased contacts with Taiwanese officials - all despite Chinese objections.
In August 2020, Health Minister Alex Azar became the highest-ranking American official to visit Taiwan since 1979.
Far from trying to mend relations with China, the Biden administration has further escalated tensions, including over Taiwan.
Biden made it clear that he intended to develop a close relationship with Taiwan by becoming the first president to invite the de facto ambassador of Taiwan to Washington, Xiao Bi-Khim, to attend his inauguration.
In the final days of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he would lift all restrictions on contact between American and Taiwanese officials, civil and military, at all levels.
With minor changes, the Biden administration continued this policy. In June, with Biden's blessing, a group of U.S. Senators nominally visited Taiwan to announce a donation of COVID-19 vaccines.
US military and economic threats
The dispute between China and the United States over Taiwan is not just about diplomatic protocols.
Strengthening US ties with Taiwan poses certain strategic and economic threats to China.
The secret deployment of US Special Forces instructors to Taiwan coincides with a more ominous possibility, uncovered by the Japanese news agency Nikkei, that the US is considering the possibility of deploying medium-range offensive missiles in Asia, including Taiwan.
The island of Taiwan is not only strategically located close to the mainland of China, but is also part of the first island chain stretching from Japan to the Philippines, which US strategists consider vital to contain the Chinese naval forces in case of war. During the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur claimed that Taiwan was an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" capable of projecting American power along the coast of China as part of a containment strategy.
Economically, Taiwan is home to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which accounts for 55% of global chip production and 90% of the most advanced chips required for both industrial and military use.
There is intense discussion in US military circles about the dangers of war with China over Taiwan.
In March, Admiral Phil Davidson - the outgoing head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, which will be at the forefront of any conflict with China - warned that the US could go to war with China in less than six years and called for a huge increase in its command's budget. Pointing to China's advances in military technology, Davidson and others called for the accelerated development of new weapons systems for use in the conflict with China.
Behind the military impulse of American imperialism against China lies both Washington's fear of the economic crisis and a deep political and social crisis within the country.
In the face of tremendous social tensions and growing struggles in the American working class, the ruling stratum could resort to war as a means of directing social tensions "outward" against an external enemy, and at the same time reverse its historical decline and restore the regional and global hegemony that it received after World War II.
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