What is a country? Part II: Fighting the Gish Gallop

A tour group from China snaps pictures of Liberty Leading the People

In my last post on this topic, I chose to combat disinformation that Taiwan is not a country by clarifying all the ways that it is. Not just because we want it to be so, but because international conventions do, in fact, light a pathway toward recognized Taiwan statehood. 

Since the last post was about all the arguments for Taiwan as a nation, in this post I want to address all the (very poor) arguments against it, which so often get flung at Taiwan advocates like a hail of bonobo feces, for daring to take principled stances supporting the nation's essential nation-ness.

If you ignore it, you risk all that disinformation influencing reasonable onlookers who mistake quantity for quality ("well all these Chinese people say Taiwan is Chinese, so there's probably something to that!")

But if you do fight back, it really is like trying to swim in the feces tsunami. Or fight a thousand-headed hydra bursting from Twitter's wine-dark sea. Except the hydra is made of bonobo feces. Please just let me have this metaphor.

This is intentional: it's called gish galloping. The unending pummeling of poorly-considered arguments that are easily refuted, but there are so many flying around that you can't ever get to the end of it all. It tires you out and makes no visible impact. 

Because it's difficult to know what to do about this, I put together a list of the most common monkeyturds that get flung around in this kind of gish galloping. That is, all the bad arguments against Taiwan statehood that we hear again and again, changing with the seasons or the news cycle and sometimes resurfacing, all because someone in a United Front Work Department office made a decision about what their botmasters and gormless trolls are going to argue about for awhile, until the Western tankies pick it up while checking Twitter while drinking $8 pourovers and pass it on.

So let's hop on the bonobo feces train! 

"International law" says Taiwan is a part of China.

Of course, there is no such law. There is not a single binding international treaty that gives Taiwan to the People's Republic of China, but there are theories based on treaties or conventions that provide some guidance. You can read about those in my previous post on the topic. But "international law says Taiwan is Chinese" is simply not true. 

How do I know? Well, name the law, if you can. Show it to me. Is it binding? Does it apply to Taiwan specifically? Was it consented to by all parties involved, including the Taiwanese people?

Bet not.


"The UN says Taiwan is part of China!" 

Some insist it's due to UN resolutions on which government represents 'China' -- but if Taiwan is not a part of China, then of course it doesn't matter if it doesn't represent China at the UN! 

Not only does it not matter, but citing the UN as the final authority on Taiwan statehood fundamentally misrepresents what that organization does. It does not mint new states, and never has. Did no countries exist before some countries decided to found it? Did the People's Republic of China blink into existence in the 1970s? Did the Republic of China stop existing in 1949 when it lost the war, or the day it lost UN recognition? 

Let's keep it going. In 1993 the UN used its warlock-like powers to create the concept of Monaco. A Google search says Monaco's been A Thing since 1297, was officially recognized in 1861 and its constitution dates from 1911, but according to this logic, none of that matters — it wasn't a country at all until the 1990s. Switzerland was clearly neutral in previous wars not due to any principled stance, but apparently because it didn't exist until 2002. 

Taiwan doesn't already represent itself in that organization only because, decades ago, it was run by an incompetent, undemocratic and frankly foreign dictatorship that had no care for Taiwan's own interests -- Taiwan could have been Taiwan. A different, better future had been possible, but the KMT robbed Taiwan of that option, along with so much else. 

Regardless, other countries can and do engage in relations with Taiwan, both officially (in a few cases) and unofficially. That meets one criteria for statehood under the Montevideo Convention, and the others are met as well.

The UN not giving Taiwan a seat doesn't change that, so clearly the UN doesn't get to decide whether or not Taiwan is sovereign.


"Other countries have One China policies!"

This argument conveniently forgets that the vast majority of those policies merely maintain that one government represents China, and acknowledge that China claims Taiwan. Most if not all of them leave room for an independent Taiwan that does not represent China.

Their policies are not the same as China's "One China Principle" -- an idea which no major power has agreed to verbatim.

Besides, it's really odd for so-called anti-imperialists to point to, say, US or UK policy as the final word on another country's international status. That feels pretty imperialist to me.

Some will say that the US also acknowledges that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China” (in the Shanghai Communique, often misattrinbuted to the Taiwan Relations Act). 

Which was true, if you're talking about a dictatorship in the late 1970s that didn't represent the Taiwanese people, and which no longer exists. Now, Taiwanese don't see themselves that way, and nobody asked them in the 1970s when that policy was penned, rendering the wording somewhat irrelevant. The people on one side of the Taiwan Strait (mostly) no longer maintain that they are “Chinese”, and certainly not that “Taiwan is a part of China”. Acknowledging ‘both sides’ maintain a certain belief is just what it implies: an acknowledgement of what other parties believe. That’s it. Regardless, it becomes meaningless the moment one side no longer believes it. 

"Taiwan hasn't declared independence!"

Who would it declare independence from? China? You mean the PRC? It is already independent of that. The ROC? That's a name change and some constitutional reform, two issues that countries usually handle internally. In and of themselves they do not constitute a “declaration of independence’. They don’t need to, as Taiwan is already independent.

I don't go around declaring "I am Jenna!" as some sort of prerequisite for being Jenna. There's no application you fill out. There's no form. There's no DBC -- Department of Becoming a Country -- to which you submit paperwork. 

So I struggle to understand what 'declare independence' even means regarding Taiwan. Is Taiwan sovereign and fully autonomous now? Yes? Then tell me -- Taiwan should declare independence from whom?

(Don't worry, if your answer was "the ROC!", we'll get to that shortly.)

"No countries recognize Taiwan!"

Oh, but some actually do -- the ROC has a few diplomatic allies. As we saw in the last post, however, this isn't what makes a country. Every one of those allies could abandon Taiwan, and it would still be a country. When it comes to diplomacy, all Taiwan needs to meet the criteria for an independent nation is the ability to enter into relations with other countries, which it has, and has exercised. 

"But they recognize the ROC, not Taiwan as a country!" Yes, and I bet every single person making those claims is aware that the ROC as a sovereign entity from China is functionally nearly identical to Taiwan in the same role. (Not exactly the same: changes will eventually be necessary, but it's close enough for now). 

If China would allow any country to recognize both China and Taiwan as distinct entities, many if not most would immediately do so.

It doesn't really matter though: the Montevideo Convention does not stipulate that relations with other states have to be official diplomatic ones, or even that they have to be entered into -- merely that it is possible for that state to do so.

"But it's in the ROC Constitution! Taiwan itself thinks it's part of China!"

I've read the constitution, and it never explicitly claims current PRC  territory. The closest you get is Article 4, which states that the boundaries of the ROC are its existing boundaries and "shall not be altered except by a resolution of the national assembly."  Cool, but it never states what those borders actually are. The National Assembly no longer exists, so either way this is article is either tautological ("the borders are what they are") or dead law. 

Right now, those de facto borders are Taiwan and its outlying islands. There's a mention of Mongolia and Tibet in Article 26, but it's linked to the erstwhile National Assembly, so again...dead law.

Besides, the additional articles to the constitution were very clearly described by Lee Teng-hui as a "two-state solution". Perhaps the constitution is difficult to amend, but new ideas can be agglomerated; for all intents and purposes, Taiwan dropped any claim it once had to PRC territory in the early 1990s. Not even a fabricated '1992 Consensus' about 'one China' (which was not a consensus: even the KMT admits the two sides did not actually agree) can un-jigger Lee's brilliant jiggery.

Some will say this issue is still "controversial" in Taiwan. I say it's not: Taiwan being separate from 'China' is a mainstream position, whether you consider it independence or the status quo. 


"What about the 1992 Consensus?"

You mean that meeting in 1992 in which the two sides didn't agree? And the legitimacy of the Taiwan side is deeply questionable as it was at the end of the dictatorship and of questionable diplomatic merit? Yeah, no. No actual Taiwanese were consulted about what should happen at these meetings, and if I'm remembering correctly, the delegates were from the KMT, not diplomats.

But it doesn't matter! They didn't reach an agreement! “We didn’t agree” is the opposite of a “consensus”. What the KMT came away believing was not the same as what the PRC believed as those meetings ended. It was by definition not a consensus at all. (Interestingly, KMT chairperson Eric Chu basically admits this in an entertainingly awful video). This is why the actual term was made up much later: because there was no consensus. History books published around 1999 -- before the consensus was fabricated -- don't mention the 1992 Consensus. Of course they don't, as it didn't exist yet.

"Taiwan's not independent because the ROC is a colonizer!"

This one's tough, because I actually agree with it. The ROC on Taiwan is a colonizing entity that lost a war in the country it came from, and it should be reformed out of existence in favor of a Republic of Taiwan (or any name that voters agree on) with an appropriate constitution.

However, just as we commonly refer to the PRC as 'China', the idea of 'independence' to the general international public means 'not a part of China' -- that is, the PRC. 

Saying "Taiwan isn't independent because of ROC colonialism" just sounds like "Taiwan isn't independent" to people who don't follow these issues. It also hands ammunition to tankies, little pinks and the paid botmasters of the United Front Work Department, who love to go on and on about how Taiwan isn't independent because of the ROC. To untrained ears, it sounds like the same point. It's a bit of an own goal: why harm our own cause by making it more confusing to international audiences?

Issues of names, flags and constitutional changes are typically internal matters. Czechia and Eswatini made those choices domestically. Countries amend their constitutions and change flags all the time: there's no international body to appeal to in order to do this. So rather than giving ammunition to tankies, let's perhaps agree it needs to happen, but it's an internal matter.

Functionally, the country I live in now, regardless of its imperfect constitution and weird name, is a country. People commonly call it Taiwan. That's the fact on the ground. Claiming it's "not a country" is basically telling people to ignore the observable world.

"It's been part of China since ancient times!" 

No, it hasn't. Most of Taiwanese history has been Indigenous history, period.

The western third of Taiwan -- not very much at all -- was controlled by China from the late 17th to the late 19th centuries. For much of that, China was fairly clear that they either didn't want Taiwan (Shi Lang had to convince the emperor to keep it), or treated it as a "defensive hedge", a "ball of mud beyond civilization". That is, not really part of China. You might even say they treated it like a colony.

China only began to claim all of Taiwan in the late 19th century, though it never effectively governed that final two-thirds. As late as the 1870s, one simply could not say that the Qing actually ruled most of Taiwan. 

The most generous amount of time one might apportion in which the same government ruled both China and Taiwan might be a decade or two: perhaps short period before it became a Japanese colony in 1895, and from 1945-1949.

By historical timelines, China's claim on Taiwan is as limp as an overcooked noodle.


"But the turn away from Chinese heritage is DPP brainwashing!" 

I've already covered this and the answer is womp womp, you are wrong.

Taiwanese attitudes changed no matter who was in power, and in fact changed more under the KMT than the DPP. The biggest spike was around democratization -- and an election in which the KMT won the presidency. 

Democracy and freedom of speech -- the ability to say what you really think -- caused Taiwanese to start saying what they really thought. I'm sorry it doesn't line up with your Great Chinese Culture Embedded in Ancestral DNA worldview, but that's how it is. 


"But the US stoked Taiwan independence separatism to sell weapons and encourage conflict for their benefit!" 

Wrong again bucko. Seems like you got a little bonobo feces stuck in your ears. Read this and clean it out.

Taiwan home rule has been an idea floating around since at least the 1920s, when the US would have no reason to care, or attempt to start a conflict. It persisted, and grew thanks to KMT brutality (provably so, as you can see by the rise of Taiwanese democracy activists who trace their roots back to the 228 Massacre, approved by Chiang Kai-shek and meted out by Chen Yi). In fact, it was probably a notion as early as 1895, or before that, though the evidence is less clear. 

Many of those early Taiwanese independence activists were leftists (but not necessarily pro-CCP), some were openly Marxist. Why would the US court them at that point in history? There are conservative independence activists now -- they tend to be older and rather stuck in the 1970s regarding other attitudes -- but it was a movement inspired by liberal thought, and to some degree, in some groups, Marxist thought. 

Pinning this on "the US" isn't only a logic sinkhole, it also denies Taiwanese agency. Do they really need Big Daddy America doing their thinking for them? Are they incapable of critical thought without the CIA spoonfeeding revolutionary sentiment?

Of course not. That's ludicrous.

"The ROC is evil because the Nationalists were the capitalist bad guys who pushed separatism on Taiwan!"

Yep, the KMT sucked pretty hard. No disagreement there. Guess what, they still do! The great news is that they're no longer in power, and they're not really associated with the idea of Taiwanese independence: quite the opposite. To blame the KMT for Taiwanese independence activism is frankly offensive. They're the ones who executed those same activists, often without trial. Taiwan independence advocates by and large can't stand the KMT. It's absolutely strange to act like they're one and the same.

If you honestly think that "Taiwanese independence activists" and "the KMT" are natural partners, feel free to read any of the links in this post. It will disavow you of that notion very quickly.

“You’ll understand that Taiwan is Chinese if you just read about the issue!” 

This only matters insofar as the Pink Floyd guy decided he was a late-blooming Sinologist. I have read up on the issue — in fact, Brendan and I read every general history of Taiwan available in English and compared them. I’ve read plenty of books that discuss specific areas of Taiwanese history. 

What have I learned from “reading about the issue”? That Taiwan isn’t Chinese and arguably never really has been. 

As Brendan likes to say, Taiwan advocates actually want you to read more about Taiwan. People who think annexation is an acceptable outcome might say “read more”, but they don’t expect you actually will. They want you to listen to them, not read further. I’ve never seen them recommend, say, a book. I’ve just recommended about 20. Please read them. 

“But it’s the only way to peace! Taiwan independence is destabilizing!”

The opposite is true. Taiwan will never consent to be annexed by China, and simply wants to maintain the sovereignty it already enjoys. There is no peaceful resolution that ends with Taiwan as a part of China, because Taiwan will always fight back, at least as long as the current Chinese government is in power (but likely after that as well — and I do believe the CCP will eventually fall.) That is an assured path to war. It’s unlikely to be a short war, though it may fall out of the news cycle as the ongoing violence will be within Taiwan. 

I don’t want that, and you probably don’t either.

So if you want to avoid that war, advocate China not attacking Taiwan. It is very easy to not invade one’s neighbor (a lesson Russia might’ve done well to learn). Doing so is a choice, not an imperative, and it’s a choice China can choose not to make. China’s choices are not inevitabilities dropped from the heavens. Their threats are not immutable. Their anger and their red lines and temper tantrums? These are choices, and should be treated as such. 

That’s the path to peace. So the outcome most likely to avoid war is one in which Taiwan remains separate from China. 

Got any more?

I'm happy to expand this post with more gish gallops, strawmen, goalpost moving or other tactics that little pinks use to make life on social media unbearable if you care about an issue. Let me know, and if I get some good responses I'll add them to the post.

What is a country? (Taiwan, for one.)

There's a lot of tankie and tankie-adjacent horptyglorp about how Taiwan cannot possibly be considered a country. This is wrong, and I am delighted to tell you why. 

This is the first of a two-part post: in a day or two I plan to do a little mythbusting of all the specious claims made about Taiwan by people whose opinions are most likely bought and paid for.

So what evidence actually supports the case for Taiwan nationhood? There are multiple ways to determine this: by internationally agreed-upon convention; by the status of various binding treaties; or by whether or not the state in question is recognized by other states. 

The fact that there actually is more than one valid interpretation or way to come to a conclusion about Taiwan's status is proof, in itself, that there is no singular "international law", "One China Policy" or "UN recognition" that determines Taiwan's status. 

What's more, by any one of those interpretations, Taiwan, or the government that currently presides over it, either is a country (by convention), or its status is undetermined (by treaty). I happen to ascribe to the former view, but the latter deserves some space as well.

Let's dispense quickly with the "nationhood derives from recognition by other nations" argument. A sovereign government on Taiwan does indeed enjoy a small amount of official recognition, which means it is a country. However, the convention discussed below explicitly states that official recognition by other nations is not necessary. I don't see a strong argument for it as the final determiner in what makes a country.

Convention, or treaty?

The most obvious support comes from the widely recognized Montevideo Convention. Though it was conceived and signed at a International Conference of American States in the 1930s, it's widely accepted as a standard by international organizations. 

According to the convention, a state is a state when it has a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. 

Taiwan has all of these things, and more (for example, it has a military and a currency). 

Taiwan does need constitutional reform and a name change, but honestly, states amend their constitutions and change their names all the time, and as noted above, the ROC constitution doesn't actually claim all of 'China'. From an international perspective, the ROC as a state, for now, is not meaningfully or functionally different from Taiwan not being part of what just about everyone recognizes as 'China'.

Here's what I find interesting: the "ability to enter into relations with other states" doesn't necessarily entail diplomatic recognition. Relations can take on many forms. In fact, the convention is quite specific about this (emphasis mine): 

The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states. Even before recognition, the state has the right to defend its integrity and independence, to provide for its conservation and prosperity, and consequently to organize itself as it sees fit, to legislate upon its interests, administer its services, and to define the jurisdiction and competence of its courts. The exercise of these rights has no other limitation than the exercise of the rights of other states according to international law.

By this measure, there is simply no question. Taiwan is a state. It is a country. Like Czechia or Eswatini, it can change its problematic name without changing the fundamental fact of its sovereignty; like many countries, it can do the same with its constitution. It simply chooses not to (yet) in order to signal that it is not the entity raising tensions in the region -- that's China.

What's more, there's no law, not even a rule, that a country is only a country through admission to the United Nations. UN recognition would be nice to have, but it's not a need to have. Of course, the UN cannot be considered objective on the matter of Taiwan; with China acting the bully on the security council, Taiwan can never expect fair treatment from that international body. 


Taiwan as undetermined?

To me, the convention argument makes sense. It establishes a clear-cut path for a nation to arise and govern itself without other nations needing to validate it. I favor this because it allows for autonomous nation-building and self-determination. It does away with the presumption that only others can tell you what you are, and circumvents imperialist tendencies to look to great powers (or large international bodies bullied by those great powers) to determine the fate of smaller states.

In other words, it's the best possible balance between the importance of nations working together and finding agreement, and the fundamental human right of self-determination.

But let's talk treaties anyway. Another common argument is that Taiwan is a part of China because this or that proclamation, declaration or treaty says so. Usually the reference is to the Cairo Declaration, but that was non-binding. Some refer to the various treaties surrounding Japan's surrender of Taiwan, but neither of these clarifies the status of Taiwan. 

Rather than repeat what's already been said about this, here's a fantastic link, and a few choice quotes for those who hit the paywall:

At the end of World War II, ROC troops occupied Taiwan under the aegis of the wartime Allies. Ever since, the then-ruling Kuomintang (KMT) has claimed that Taiwan had been “returned to China” and was now part of the ROC. In reality, Taiwan remained formally under Japanese sovereignty until April 28, 1952, when the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 (SFPT) came into effect. Under the Peace Treaty  Japan renounced control of Taiwan, but no recipient of sovereignty was named. This was a deliberate arrangement by the wartime powers. The United States did not want either of the murderous, authoritarian Leninist parties claiming to be the true government of China, the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the KMT, to have Taiwan. Thus, under international law, Taiwan’s status remains undetermined to this day....

I'm not sure I agree fully with this interpretation. It's true that if we go by binding treaties, Taiwan's status is undetermined. But if, as above, we follow broadly-accepted conventions on what makes a country, then Taiwan's status is clear: it's a country. However, the "undetermined" argument has a place in this discussion. Anyway, let's continue:

Only two internationally recognized documents directly bear on Taiwan’s sovereignty are legally binding in the sense that Gao means: the San Francisco Peace Treaty, and the Treaty of Taipei between Japan and the Republic of China on Taiwan. The Treaty of Taipei is deliberately subordinate to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, and neither assigns sovereignty over Taiwan to China, whether in its Communist or Nationalist incarnation. Instead, they are silent on the issue of who owns Taiwan, merely affirming that Japan gave up sovereignty over the island....

When then Foreign Minister Yeh Kung-chao was questioned in the legislature after the signing of the Treaty of Taipei, he said that “no provision has been made either in the San Francisco Treaty of Peace as to the future of Taiwan and Penghu.” When a legislator asked him, “What is the status of Formosa and the Pescadores?” He responded:

“Formosa and the Pescadores were formerly Chinese territories. As Japan has renounced her claim to Formosa and the Pescadores, only China has the right to take them over. In fact, we are controlling them now, and undoubtedly they constitute a part of our territories. However, the delicate international situation makes it that they do not belong to us...."

Even the Republic of China knows that there's no binding international law, treaty or convention that renders Taiwan theirs, let alone Taiwan a part of China or not a country in its own right.

This is the same Republic of China that, years after a foreign minister admitted the ROC had no legal right to Taiwan, devised a 'two state solution' and overtly referred to it as such. The same Republic of China whose (non-KMT) presidents routinely call the country they govern "Taiwan" and have, on multiple occasions, defined it as 'independent'. The same Republic of China that meets all the definitions of a 'state', not a province.


Taiwan is a country

What should define Taiwan today? This is easy: it can only be defined by what Taiwanese people want for Taiwan. What they want isn't hard to see unless you are deliberately not looking: most identify as solely Taiwanese, not Chinese. Those who identify as both mostly prioritize Taiwanese identity, and most consider the status quo to be sufficient qualification to consider independent.

Does that sound like 23 million people who don't want their own country? No. It sounds like a populace happy with Taiwan continuing to be independent from the People's Republic of China to me. 

If there's a take-home here, it's that Taiwan's current de facto independence is, essentially, independence, and broadly agreed-on conventions of what makes a nation do indeed apply to Taiwan. By that measure, Taiwan is a country. There are different ways of interpreting this, but no sincere effort to understand Taiwan's status ends with 'well it's clearly part of China'. There is simply no perspective that renders such a claim true: the PRC doesn't govern it, and Taiwan doesn't claim the PRC mainland.

What all of these points of view do have in common is simple: there is no international law that makes Taiwan 'part of China', but plenty of international conventions and interpretations of statehood that support the idea of Taiwan as not just deserving of independent statehood, but already having it. 

Is it "progressive realism" or just racism?

Chiu Kuo-chun, 2013

May The Five Blessings Descend Upon This House

Silk print and embroidery

Now that I have had time to calm down, I want to talk about what is, in my estimation, the worst paper involving Taiwan written in the past decade. This may be in parts less organized than I'd like, but the alternative is my original reaction: indiscriminate shrieking of expletives. So you get what you get.

Anyway.

An article was recently published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs by Nick Bisley, Robyn Eckersley, Shahar Hameiri, Jessica Kirk, George Lawson and Benjamin Zala on "progressive realism" in Australian politics. 

The piece defines "progressive realism" (a real term in International Affairs, not just progressivism in the common sense) and applies it to pandemics, climate change, infrastructure in the Pacific, and Taiwan. For the purposes of this post, only the section on Taiwan matters. 

What is it, then? According to the authors, it:

"combines a ‘realistic’ diagnosis of the key dynamics that underpin contemporary world politics with a ‘progressive’ focus on the redistribution of existing power configurations. Taken together, these two building blocks provide the foundations for a left-of-centre foreign policy agenda."

 

This definition is based on the work of Joseph Nye and Robert Wright and became popular about 15 years ago. Notably, this was just about the time that the Bush II era of American hard power was declining in popularity and an 'early 2000s progressive' like Obama looked set to displace that whole way of thinking. This was also back when we thought a Democratic foreign policy after the 2008 elections would be markedly different from Bush II's, From my vantage point in 2022, I'm no longer so sure that was the case.

The short of what Nye argued for was acknowledging the world and the powers with in it as it is, not as we'd like it to be, and working within those constraints to do what we can to disseminate liberal values (think liberty, democracy, human rights), through soft power whenever possibly and hard (military) power only when necessary. This might mean accepting cultural differences where those values don't necessarily read the same way, or it might mean accepting that we don't have the power to fix everything we'd like. With events like the rise of China as an economic power, this might mean incorporating China as a "responsible stakeholder" (that's a quote from Nye) in the global order. 

Basically, integrate hard and soft power, encourage the evolution of a liberal "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" international mindset where we can, but accept that a superpower like the US doesn't get to set the global agenda.

What's wrong with that? Well, there are three key flaws with the paper itself. First, it doesn't examine regional stability and security from all viewpoints -- in other words, by denying Taiwan agency or even the consideration that it might react differently than they assume, it displays frightening racism. 

Second, it does not do what it says it does vis-a-vis "progressive realism". At the end of the day, what they're offering up is just plain old realism. Even if you accept that "progressive" has a specific definition here, it still doesn't meet its own goals. 

Finally, it fundamentally misunderstands China. It doesn't just get China fatally wrong, but it does so in a way so bone-chilling that I am quite certain the authors do not realize the subtext of what they're actually saying. If you treat China in 2022 as though Nye's conception of China in 2006 still holds, you are in for a very rude awakening. 

Let's start with the lack of agency accorded Taiwan. The 'realist' aspect of a "progressive realist" policy requires the analyst to craft solutions to policy issues that take into account power relations as they are, not as one would like them to be. In that sense, if one calculates that Taiwan doesn't have a lot of power compared with China, and therefore is either in too hopeless a position to be aided in its struggle for autonomy, or the cost of doing so would be prohibitively high or likely unsuccessful, then the logical next step is to abandon Taiwan. 

Under that set of assumptions, what Taiwan wants doesn't matter, and the values it stands for don't either: the power dynamic and constraints are what they are, period. 

However, a progressive realist would say that Taiwan deserves a better outcome than outright annexation if possible and will start to throw out suggestions like a negotiated peace, or concessions from both sides. Deter China from engaging in the worst kind of subjugation, even if it means Taiwan ultimately loses quite a bit.

This is ultimately what the paper attempts to say:

 

A successful invasion would signal the end of US primacy in Asia and it would likely be dismal for 23 million Taiwanese. But it is not clear that maintaining the island’s de facto independence would ensure a favourable balance of power.

There are three major policy options for responding to the threat of the use of force over Taiwan: negotiation, deterrence and conflict. Negotiation and deterrence are compatible with a progressive realist approach; conflict is not. The first option is to negotiate some kind of bargain in which the PRC achieves its ambitions while making concessions of its own, such as stepping back from its claims in the East and South China Seas and accepting a regional balance of power that retains a significant US presence (Glaser 2015). There is a strong long-term rationale for making such a concession in that it could significantly reduce the risks of war and create a potentially stable foundation for regional order.

Even working within those constraints, however, there's a big problem with the argument: it assumes Taiwan would react the way the analysts or policy officials in other countries would prefer them to react. That is, they assume Taiwan would negotiate, would allow itself a "dismal" future for no particular benefit to itself. Conflict would be thus avoided.

What happens if Taiwanese, understandably, react much the same way to a foreign invasion as Ukrainians are? Where's your "progressive balance of power" then, with more than half of global trade completely bottled up and unable to move through the W.Pacific??

— Fisk (@Fiskorama) March 23, 2022

You might think you have a seamless reintegration of Taiwan into China, to give the latter "space" (and boy, the historical echoes of that!), but the whole strategy requires Asian people, i.e. Taiwanese & Japanese, to do what white politicians want them to do. What if they don't?

— Fisk (@Fiskorama) March 23, 2022

Exactly. What happens when Taiwanese don't bend over and do what mostly white politicians in majority-white countries want them to do?

Even if you argue that, absent any carrots, negotiating to avoid a stick is still a benefit, it still doesn't hold. Taiwan will get hit with that stick no matter what it does, so what benefit is it to Taiwan to subjugate itself? China has nothing -- truly nothing -- to offer in return.

Considering this, the calculation that ending the Taiwan conflict now by allowing Taiwan to be subjugated would reduce conflict in the Pacific is fundamentally flawed, because it assumes that China can be handed Taiwan with no war breaking out -- that Taiwan would react just as they wish. 

Except a war would break out, because Taiwan is not likely to go quietly. There might be a prolonged insurgency. Certainly, the global economy would be rattled. Millions would die. That doesn't sound like avoiding conflict to me.

If anything, it sounds like a recipe for a conflict that would do more harm in the Pacific than deterring China. 

You can tell that the writers did not even consider the Taiwanese position nor how Taiwan would react -- compliance and complicity in their own demise was simply assumed -- by looking at the citations. 

No Taiwanese academic or journalistic work was cited. Only two references consider Taiwan in the title, and both look at it from non-Taiwanese perspectives. There are three Asian voices represented: one is Penny Wong, an Australian senator of Malaysian Chinese heritage, and another is Zhang Denghua, who specializes in Chinese (not Taiwanese) foreign policy. 

The third is Xi Jinping. 

Of course they assumed Taiwanese compliance in this grand new scheme they've proposed, because they never consulted any Taiwanese sources that might indicate otherwise. 

Under a realist paradigm it might be within bounds (that's not to say I think it's acceptable -- I don't) to disregard Taiwan's perspective. But when part of your calculus for how to maximize peace and see the world as it is rests on how Taiwan reacts to a Chinese invasion, that's nothing less than an abrogation of academic and analytical rigor. It throws the entire paper into question.

As a result, the paper utterly fails to actually offer a progressive realist solution to the Taiwan issue. The authors take all the cold calculus of realism, with none of the higher-minded goals of actually using an integration of soft and hard power to advance a liberal world order (whether one thins the "liberal world order" is hopelessly corrupted is another topic; for now let's assume that however imperfect, it's preferable an authoritarian world order.)

If Nye and Wright wanted to acknowledge the world as it is while doing whatever is possible, within identified constraints, to evolve the world toward liberal ideals, these writers simply want to hand more power and "space" to China. They do admit it would create a region where authoritarianism holds more sway than liberal democracy:

The redistribution of power and status at the international level will not in itself produce progressive outcomes. To the contrary, in some cases, authoritarian states will wield more influence than they held before. But there is nothing progressive about refusing to recognise a changed material reality, most obviously the rise (or return) of authoritarian great powers.

Perhaps not, but there's also nothing progressive about giving those powers whatever they want, including control of a country with a population comparable to Australia who embody all of the ideals that progressive realists want to marry with old-school realism.

In other words, this conclusion is just realism. The "progressive" aspect is merely window dressing.

They try to argue that handing Taiwan to China would not increase its hard power or military might -- I think this is quite wrong, because it absolutely would give them a foothold from which to threaten all the other neighboring nations it has been angering for quite some time. Their solution to this is to claim that, handed Taiwan on a platter, China would agree to stop threatening the South China Sea (and, by implication, the Senkakus and Ryukyus, both of which they've got their sights on to varying degrees.)

China would probably agree to this. These writers would probably pat themselves on the back for a good proposal, well-executed. 

Then China would turn around and do whatever the hell it wanted around Japan and the South China Sea anyway, because that's what it does. We already know that: I could point to endless agreements that China has chucked in the trash whenever it feels like it, but all one really needs to do is look at Hong Kong.

Each of those conflicts would create yet another risk of escalation. China creates these problems and will continue doing so; giving it more space to create more problems is a great way to increase, not decrease, the threat of a larger war breaking out.

All of those ideals that are meant to differentiate progressive realism from realism are treated as expendable in this case. But if they're expendable -- sorry, calculated to be unattainable -- then that's not progressive realism, it's just realism.

It may be obvious by now that I don't have a lot of faith in progressive realism as a concept. I say this as an Earnest Liberal: it reads as a way for fellow good-vibes milquetoast Earnest Liberals to just do coldhearted realism, and have ethics only when it's convenient and easy. It gives them a way to say they care about human rights, democracy and the liberal world order while selling out exactly those things. It's a license to engage in hypocrisy.

Personally, I feel that if you say you stand for democracy then you should actually stand for democracy. Not democracy when it's convenient or democracy for me, but screw you. If you're willing to sell out a democracy, I don't care how you spin it, you are not standing for democracy. 

You're also creating a world in which authoritarian great powers can gobble up whatever they want, including fellow democracies. In that world, no one is truly safe. 

That doesn't sound like a secure world order to me. 

Let's take my feelings out of it, though, and consider whether the paper offers a progressive realist solution to the conflict China has created over Taiwan within its own framework. To successfully do so, the paper would have to make the case that selling Taiwan out to China would be a net benefit: peace, stability and more access to everything liberalism promises in the region if not the world. 

It doesn't. Giving China 'more space' is a great way to help China use its might to influence other Asia-Pacific nations to move away from democracy and toward authoritarianism. Many if not most are already sliding in that direction. That's not improving the world where we can as per Nye, it's just realism. 

The authors reject this:

Were the island to fall under PRC control, it would not significantly advance PRC military capacities; the leaps it is making in naval, missile and air capabilities have already shifted the regional balance (Porter and Mazarr 2021). Taiwan’s circumstances are not the particular tipping point that would lead to a general shift in the regional balance of power towards Chinese hegemony.

I find this unconvincing, but even if we take it seriously, "the bully is already very powerful so we should simply give it whatever it wants" sounds like a lot of things -- realism, defeatism, illiberalism. It doesn't sound like a "left-of-center" anything. 

They call it "sober" and "clear-eyed". I call it cowardly, selfish and hypocritical.

In terms of stability, it offers up a very real conflict -- the certainty of a war in Taiwan and horrific subjugation of Taiwanese -- as a way to avoid an inferred or theoretical 'larger conflict' with China that is assumed to exist but has not yet actually taken shape. It's quite literally positing that the certainty of a war in Taiwan is preferable to the possibility of a war between China and Australia later. 

The paper also maintains a focus on Australian interests, not necessarily Asia-Pacific ones. That makes sense given the scope of the work, but if you're going to make the case that selling out one nation will be of net benefit to the world, not just Australia, you've actually got to make that case.  

A progressive realist policy for Australia, therefore, combines negotiation and deterrence based on a clear-eyed assessment of Taiwan’s importance for Australian interests in a stable regional balance of power.

They don't. Taiwan and Australia have comparable populations (23.6 and 25.6 million, respectively). 

If you maintain a narrow focus on what benefits Australia, and then argue that allowing Taiwan to be annexed and subjugated is in Australia's interests, then there is no net benefit. You are merely advocating for the certain oppression, torture and slaughter (all things China would absolutely do in the war that would break out because Taiwan is highly unlikely to surrender) of tens of millions of Taiwanese in exchange for the theoretical benefit to an equivalent number of (majority white) Australians.

I don't know about you, but to me that sounds like plain old white-people-come-first racism. 

Absolutely - "the imagined nuclear threat to white Australians outweighs the real threat of genocide to Taiwanese people" - even in hypothetical terms we are never truly human, just expendable chess pieces that exist to service white supremacy. 🤡

— Dr. C (@iaukuigina) March 23, 2022

It's not even clear what the benefits would be to Australians: vague conceptual things like "greater security",  perhaps? Certainly, supporting Taiwan doesn't entail a trade-off in which Australians necessarily endure the same level of subjugation and slaughter. So a clear and predictable destruction of Taiwan for a possibly more secure future for Australia? That's not remotely equivalent let alone a greater benefit.

In fact, one could argue that giving China more 'space' would be detrimental to Australia. China already threatens both Chinese in Australia and Australians of Chinese heritage. To some extent, they cause trouble for Australians not of Chinese heritage, too. They lease ports, have stakes in valuable economic interests, are willing to deploy economic punishments whenever they don't get what they want, and have extensive influence operations in Australian politics, education and media (Chinese-language media in Australia is still Australian media). None of this is benign. Allowing more of it would weaken, not strengthen, Australia's position. 

In other words -- seriously, you want to sell out Taiwan so you can insert yourself more firmly into China's chokehold?

A friend pointed out that the "benefit to the world or a greater number of people", though not expressly stated in the paper, is implied by the term progressive realism. Perhaps, but I don't buy it. If you're going to make the case that this is of the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people -- again, a utilitarian argument I don't buy -- then you actually have to make that case. They don't. 

It might not be so offensive if the authors simply admitted this is realism dressed-up in feel-good frippery -- oh, so sorry that your nation and everything it stands for is destroyed! Your sacrifice which you didn't agree to won't be forgotten! Australians are now theoretically more secure! I hope the mass murder isn't too murder-y -- but they call this a "left of center" approach:

Taken together, these two building blocks provide the foundations for a left-of-centre foreign policy agenda. 

They care enough about this "left-of-center" aspect of progressive realism to put it in the abstract. It's not just a throwaway word. They also spend a great deal of time criticizing right-wing foreign policy: 

Over the past two decades, right-wing political movements have taken power in a number of states, from the United States to Turkey, Hungary to India, the Philippines to Brazil. These movements go by a range of names: populism, the New Right, the global right, and more....The adhesive that binds these policies is an assertive strain of nationalism. The popularity of these movements indicates that this tying together of international symptoms with nationalist policy programs is a potent blend. In foreign policy terms, it points towards a strategy of ‘militarist isolationism’ in which a hostility to multilateral institutions is matched by a preference for increased military spending and the pursuit of militarised competition as an end in itself.

But, again, I dare you to find any meaningful differences between what they're advocating -- isolationism and Australia-first nationalism -- and the sort of right-wing realism they claim to be against. 

If progressive realism is meant to be a liberal-but-realistic answer to straight-up realpolitik, then it utterly fails by refusing to consider in any depth what Taiwan represents and what that's worth. Which, again, only makes sense within its own framework if your starting point is realism. 

Even with the benefit of the doubt freely given -- Australia shouldn't spend resources supporting Taiwan because it is simply outside our capability to save it from China is an argument that has logical merit even if it is ethically vacant -- it still doesn't hold up, for two reasons.

Australia alone can't save Taiwan. Australia as part of a cooperating partner in the "liberal world order" that seeks to support liberal democracies like Taiwan, however, does have a role to play. Abrogating it isn't progressive realism, It's not an integration of hard and soft power. It's self-fulfilling prophecy: if you decide Taiwan is not worth helping, then you embolden China to threaten Taiwan to the point that it's difficult to step in and help. If Taiwan faces a massive threat that it can't win against on its own, that is because countries like Australia have decided to leave it on its own. It's sort of like an uncertainty principle: if Australia determines that Taiwan can't be helped, it brings about a situation in which Taiwan probably can't be helped. Australia's reaction isn't independent of that outcome, it's integral to it.

Finally, on this front, the logic that Taiwan can't be aided and therefore is better off abandoned isn't even held up by the argumentation in a paper. Their points on this front boil down to China acts like a bully, so the solution to greater stability for all is to let it act like a bully. But since when has giving a bully everything it wants created peace? The paper doesn't even necessarily say that Australia is incapable of aiding in a defense of Taiwan, just that Taiwan is not strategically important enough and taking Taiwan wouldn't increase China's hard power.

They don't give any detail on why this might be true -- they just assume it. The only argument offered for it is, again, the assumption that China will calm down if given what it wants. But we already know that China tears up agreements, it doesn't abide by them. We already know that Taiwan is one of a strong of democracies along the Pacific Rim, and selling it out would further isolate fellow democracies like Japan and South Korea, while doing nothing to improve the flawed democracy of the Philippines. 

The writers simply hand-wave this away as "well there are a lot of governments in Asia, we can let it become more authoritarian and just sort of be super chill about it":

Nor would it sign the death knell for democracy in a region of mixed political forms. Indeed, if managed with diplomatic acumen, responding to Chinese militarisation without conflict could generate a more robust political foundation for regional order than a binary ‘fight or flight’ response that divides the region by forcing states, including many with close ties to the PRC, to choose sides.

Again, that's not progressive realism, which would give more credit and support to the democratic nations of Asia. It over-stresses how popular China is among other nations in Asia (not very), and uses impressive word salad to say that maybe Authoritarianism Lite is okay, while hand-waving away real threats to democracy. 

Instead of making a strong case that Taiwan can't be helped (which could be argued under progressive realism), they assume that and then talk about why it's not important enough to be saved for strategic reasons (straight-up realism). But, of course "impossible" and "not important" are two very different things. They make a strong case for neither.

It gets worse: the authors do state that Taiwan's future would be "dismal", but beyond that they don't even stick to their "sad but necessary" rhetoric. They call Taiwan's status "anachronistic", which is very odd as the only anachronistic thing about the situation are China's claims. The PRC has never ruled Taiwan, the ROC ruled both places for about 4 years, before that Taiwan was a part of the Japanese empire, and before that there were perhaps a dozen years when the Qing empire held all of Taiwan rather than approximately a third of the island. 

Taiwan's current status, therefore, is only an anachronism if you think that China's claims have merit. They don't. To argue otherwise is to implicitly state that you think the annexation of Taiwan to China, however "dismal" for the Taiwanese, is ultimately the correct path in and of itself. That's not "progressive realism". It's not even realism. It's just being a dick.

Taiwan as an advanced, thriving democratic nation is no anachronism. It's an expression of exactly the sort of values the progressive realists have wanted to embody and encourage in the world. A true progressive realist would want to support that to the extent it is possible, not describe it as something undesirable in its own right -- an anachronism -- because it creates "conflict". Which of course it doesn't: China creates conflict. Taiwan just wants to be left alone. 

To put it another way, implying that a country evolving toward liberal democracy is problematic because it upsets an authoritarian neighbor is realism or just cold-blooded selfishness, not progressive realism. 

If "progressive realism" is meant to engage with international institutions and allies, incorporate soft power and avoid "militaristic isolationism", the argument fails here too. Taiwan wants to cooperate with international institutions, and it is possible for Australia to support them doing so. The US approach to Taiwan may be flawed, but both Biden and Tsai seem to be at least attempting to move US-Taiwan relations beyond mere competition with China (to what degree Biden is convincingly succeeding is another question), and it is far from isolationist.

Abandoning a friendly democratic nation in your region to appease an authoritarian power, not working with allies like the US, and cutting yourself off when it's in your own interest may not be militaristic, but it does sound like a form of isolationism. What the authors are offering, then, is just a slightly adjusted version of the right-wing policies they themselves criticize.

It's a Mobius strip of bad logic, and that's before getting into the question of whether Taiwan is of strategic military importance. I think they're quite wrong in stating that it's not, but I'm not a military analyst. A friend noted that Australia's military participation in defending Taiwan would be symbolic regardless, but if the US were to actually come to Taiwan's aid, they'd probably need to base themselves somewhat in Australia. That wouldn't be symbolic: that would be a very real contribution which would meet an important need. 

Again, if it sounds like I don't have a lot of faith in progressive realism, it's because I don't. Maybe in 2006, when the world looked a lot different, it made sense as a reaction to Bush II. In 2022, we live in a world where every time we decide a democracy isn't worth defending, we make it harder to use either soft or hard power to advance a liberal world order. We create a world where you only survive as a liberal democracy if you have a massive army to defend yourself. Maybe this was good enough for 2006. In 2022, it just sounds like more right-wing bullshit. 

The final point -- the authors' fundamental misunderstanding of how the CCP operates -- is something I've already brought up a few times. The originators of progressive realism envisioned China as a "responsible stakeholder" in the global order: a power we'd have to accommodate even if we didn't always agree with it. This assumes some basic ability to negotiate with China, however: a China that, as much as we might not like its domestic governance, we can trust to do the right thing on the international stage. 

That sounds great...for 2006. In the Year of Our Good Lord 2022, it's a fucking joke.

Why? Well, let's look at what's changed.

In Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian -- whose stance on China can be summed up as "bite me" -- was in power but he was losing popularity fast. An up-and-coming KMTer with a softer tone on China was starting to look pretty good (spoiler Alert: he sucked). Surely some Taiwanese realized that authoritarian China could never truly be a "responsible global stakeholder", but it would take until 2014 for it to become widely understood here. I won't go into everything that led to the Sunflower Movement, but it's clear that Taiwan woke up to China's empty promises earlier than anyone else.

The rest of the world took its time catching up, but several events finally made it apparent. China promised Hong Kong "One Country Two Systems" and utterly failed to uphold it. They continue to deny a well-documented genocide in East Turkestan (Xinjiang). Between these issues, their early handling of the pandemic, their harassment and kidnapping of not only Chinese abroad but foreign citizens and now the support -- albeit non-military -- that they're giving Russia as it attacks Ukraine, it is clear that the CCP is not 'responsible' and cannot be trusted in any sort of negotiation. No offers they make can be taken at face value, especially concerning Taiwan.

Nye surely did not know this at the time. But we know it now. Given the authors' negligence in trying to understand Taiwan, it's no surprise that they bring a 2006 understanding of China to the discussion, not a 2022 one. We now live in a world where powers like Russia and China, if shown they can take whatever they want, will not kindly and responsibly agree to stop taking when we ask nicely. They will simply keep taking. 

It's funny because the assumption that China would stop if they were just given their shiny Taiwan toy is the furthest thing from realism there is

— Dr. C (@iaukuigina) March 23, 2022

Their taking will lead to more conflicts, and those conflicts will each create a new possibility for a full-scale war, each war coming with its own nuclear threat. If, every time that happens, we cower and say "better give the bully what it wants or it could use nuclear weapons!" then they will continue taking whatever they want while threatening the world with nuclear weapons. Security won't be assured, because they will take any democratic nation we can't or won't defend.

The authors do one thing right: they make a limited case for deterrence -- encouraging China to avoid conflict, and Australian help in fighting cyber warfare, disinformation and other non-military threats. It's not enough, however. 

Their total disregard for the existence of Taiwanese agency is a fatal flaw in their argument, however, and their willingness to advocate for nebulous and non-guaranteed "peace" for Australians by allowing a roughly equivalent number of Taiwanese to be subjugated isn't "left-of-center" anything. It's just coldheartedness masked in academese. It's the right-wing approach they claim to abhor, without any of the positive aspects of the progressive realist framework they claim to champion. 

It doesn't just fail on the level of doing what is right. Under "progressive realism", it's technically acceptable to decide to do the wrong thing (I call this hypocrisy, but hey, that's just me). It also fails within its own framework.

Regardless, what this paper offers is not a world I want to fight for. If we roll over and cry whenever a dictator says "gimme what I want 'cause I've got nukes", then we're not using realism to figure out where the constraints are on fighting for our ideals. We're just giving dictators what they want, and that's not a viable answer to right-wing militarism.

China won't be "provoked" into a war with Taiwan -- it will start a war when it wants to

It may be precarious, but that doesn't mean we should be afraid.

This is an evergreen area of Taiwan discourse, but I'm bringing it up now in relation to the recent visit of three US Senators to Taiwan. As with every move on the part of Taiwan to create good relations and engender statements (or actions that make a statement) showing support for Taiwan, there are always people who respond: but that might provoke China! It might trigger a war! Your moves are so raw, I've got to let you know that China might attack Taiwan over them!

This is false. 

It is false because China decides when it is provoked. This is not some reflexive action, like a doctor hitting your knee with a rubber mallet. Have any of these "moves" that could "provoke China" actually done so? I don't see any bombs falling and they seem to be preparing for war at roughly the same rate they have for awhile, so no.

China called the senators' visit "a provocation", but do you see warships sailing over? I don't. Is this likely to be the spark that starts a war? No. 

The CCP made those choices: to slowly and steadily prepare for war, but not be "provoked" into starting one by this or that action in support of Taiwan. 

If China wants to start a war with Taiwan, it will do so because it wants to start a war with Taiwan. It will not be because some US senators visited Taiwan, or Japan sent some vaccines, or the US flag was flown at AIT, or Taiwan changed its passport design. 

To say these moves might "provoke" China is like saying a person "provokes" sexual assault based on what they were wearing, how much they were drinking, what party they were at or what they said or did, No. A sexual predator commits a crime because they decided to commit the crime. Their victim could have worn a baggy t-shirt and consumed only ginger ale. It doesn't matter. Their attacker was not "provoked".  They made a choice. 

You might also think of it as an abusive situation. People in abusive relationships sometimes think that if they tailor their actions a certain way, it might stop or lessen the abuse. This might appear to work on a surface level -- "if I don't wear this shirt that he thinks attracts attention, he won't beat me", "if I do what Aunt Lydia says, she won't cut out my tongue" -- but the abusive dynamic remains. 

The abuser will still abuse when they want to, because they want to, not because they were provoked. If they need an excuse they'll pick one of any potential "provocations", or simply invent one. 

And if you keep tailoring your actions to appease your abuser, then the abuser will continue to lay out more and more 'red lines' which, when crossed, 'provoke' them into abusing you. They control you now, and the abusive dynamic remains. 

If every decision made by Taiwan and its supporters is carefully tailored not to "provoke China", the CCP will simply keep setting stricter parameters of what will "provoke" them until Taiwan is so obedient that might as well be a territory of the People's Republic. And that is indeed the plan. This is intentional. And even if Taiwan and its supporters restrict their actions more and more to appease China, it will still attack whenever it wants to, because it wants to. 

Like a rapist, or an abuser.

The only thing stopping China isn't adhering to the correct moves on our side. It's China's own internal decision-making about whether it's ready for a war or not. That's it. 

China will attack Taiwan when it wants to attack Taiwan. It doesn't matter what Taiwan, the US, Japan or any country does or doesn't do before that time. You can't control their actions by changing yours, just like you can't keep an abuser at bay or end an abusive dynamic by giving in to the abuser's demands.

So send the vaccines. Send the senators. Sail the aircraft carrier. Sell Taiwan weapons. Hell, give Taiwan weapons. Fly whatever flag you want. Sign agreements. Help Taiwan participate in international organizations. Call the de facto Taiwan embassies -- and de facto foreign embassies in Taiwan -- whatever you please.

In fact, please keep it up: if the CCP is going to invade whenever it feels ready, Taiwan will need the support.

And China will only start a war over any one of them if it was already intending to start a war regardless. Even if you don't do these things, it will start that conflict whenever it wants anyway. It'll find an excuse. 

This brings me to another point: I've disagreed recently with those who say China isn't close to attacking Taiwan. In fact, I think China is very much intending to attack Taiwan, though I don't know when. Foreign Minister Joseph Wu seems to agree with me.

I do agree, however, that the hyperbolic language around every single move being one that could "provoke China" serves China. I just won't take that to the conclusion that China isn't going to start a war. It probably is, but neither Taiwan nor any other country will be the ones that "provoked" it. 

I haven't changed my view that complacency -- oh, they're not close to starting a war, we don't need to worry about this -- serves China's purpose just as much as histrionics about every single action being a "provocation", when the entire "provocation" model is built on a lie. It's just that these two views are not mutually exclusive. 

So stop it with the "moves likely to anger China", or "in a move that might provoke China". I know it's mind-blowing to indulge in the notion that China has free will, but it does.

Instead, US and Japan, how about you slide over here, and give us a moment. 

Those moves are so raw, after all. I've got to let you know. You're one of our kind.

The rigged game, and how to feint

This meme just seemed appropriate. 

I have a lot to do today, but wanted to quickly explore the game. 

Here's how it works. People who should be on the same team appear to be split. There are those who think Trump's rhetoric on China and the WHO is right, and we must stand up to these global organizations. This group tends to believe that, as a result, Trump's actual actions constitute good strategy.

Then there's the camp that think nothing Trump says can ever be correct, and therefore we shouldn't stand against China, as this could create "a new cold war". They also tend to view the WHO as mostly good, rather than mostly political.

Both sides are partially wrong. Rhetorically, the Trump administration is mostly correct. Leaving aside "they gutted American industry" - no, we did that to ourselves - and talk of excluding whole groups of Chinese citizens, it's not wrong to point out that China is planning to treat Hong Kong as just another Chinese province, and that they've basically taken control of the WHO.

The CCP is on the brink of committing an unthinkable atrocity and have already committed many others. The WHO is a political organization that prioritizes factional battles over actually helping people. Hong Kongers do need assurance of assistance, both locally and as potential refugees. These issues do need to be dealt with and can't be buried under talk of "engagement" with a government that simply cannot be trusted to keep its promises.

But strategically, Trump is wrong. Ending Hong Kong's special status makes sense in terms of ensuring that China doesn't benefit from Hong Kong while oppressing it. But China's ultimate goal is to make Hong Kong unimportant, an extension of Shenzhen rather than a distinct cultural and economic entity. The CCP so clearly wants to promote cities like Shanghai as finance hubs and gateways to China, and I doubt they've realized that this won't be appealing to much of the world. Hong Kong's relative wealth and visibility make it difficult to control when its residents rebel against CCP brutality. Shanghai, on the other hand, is basically obedient.

On this front, I don't know what to say. The game is rigged. There is no right move. End Hong Kong's special status, and you hand China something that helps them destroy Hong Kong. Keep it in place, and you let China off the hook and help them economically, after all of the horrors they have perpetuated. Someone clearly foresaw this choice when thinking through their government's possible actions - and it wasn't anyone in the Trump administration. China had this in the bag before we even knew we were in a game.

This is basic strategy and it was not foregone that the CCP would figure it out first. In any case, it makes me absolutely furious that the US really should have known that this was the CCP's endgame. After all, Taiwan and Hong Kong have been ringing the warning bells since at least since 2014. The day the first Hong Kong bookseller was attacked was the day the US should have started figuring out what the end game might look like.

Instead, they ignored all of the Asian voices who honestly tried to raise the alarm - when I say that Taiwan has been trying to warn the world about the CCP Virus, I don't just mean COVID19. It's one of the fatal flaws of the West that they just don't seem to hear non-Western voices warning about a rising Nazi-like threat in their own backyard and boom, now we've got a Sudetenland situation.

The proposed exclusion of some Chinese students from the US is also a no-win strategy. CCP incursion into global (including Western) academia is a real thing and genuine security threat, and it's well-known that the CCP has a say in which students can go abroad, asking some to collect information in return for tuition paid. Banning Chinese students who studied at Chinese military universities as undergraduates (not all Chinese students, or even most, as some have claimed) seems to make sense.

But let's remember that the students themselves are not tied to any known wrongdoing, and security protocols already exist. If this is a threat it is probably not a highly pressing one - meaning it's showy but of negligible consequence - and that Trump wanted to institute a much broader ban in 2018, long before the Hong Kong protests began. Banning Chinese students as a broad category is a long-term goal of the Trump administration and many Republicans. It's not really about Hong Kong.

There are other things that can be done. Institute stricter security. Ban Confucius Institutes. End CCP funding for academic titles and other programs. You can enforce rules - which I am sure already exist - barring student groups from harassing other students and disbanding any groups that engage in such behavior. Why broadly target Chinese students?

In any case, Trump's rhetoric on Hong Kong doesn't exonerate him from the inherent racism of his administration, and doing everything he can to target Chinese students as a group, rather than looking for institutional ways to counter CCP threats, shows this.

How do we know they are racist, despite talk of helping Hong Kong refugees?  I mean - [gestures vaguely at Minneapolis]. But also, a big chunk of Trump's 2016 campaign was predicated on stoking racism-based fears of refugees, especially from majority Muslim and Latin American countries. Then, once in office, he defunded many refugee resettlement programs and slashed the number of refugees allowed in.  Don't delude yourself that Republicans care about "refugees" as a whole.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't help Hong Kong refugees. We absolutely should. But we should help refugees, from anywhere, period. Trump never wanted to do that, and he's not going to. 

Finally, withdrawing from the WHO is not the way to fix problems inherent to the WHO. I spent a short amount of time supporting the US defunding that absolute joke of an organization, but honestly, the US is just conceding ground here. The WHO is garbage and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus should be removed from office, if not in jail. But it is still an organization that the rest of the world broadly believes in, for some reason, and China will simply be able to control it better. Not necessarily through funding, but through building up a block of allies:

(2/X) So how? I think the answer lies in the group dynamics of WHO members, which in turn influence the WHO leadership. In WHO’s 2017 election of Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was backed by the global south as well as China, which often poses itself as...

— Yu-Jie Chen 😷 (@yujiechentw) March 31, 2020

representing the interests of the global South. See this:https://t.co/Bb8ApcsNV7. Although WHO’s ballots were cast in secret (we couldn’t see who voted what), I would be surprised if there had not been careful coordination between China & global South to ensure Tedros' victory.

— Yu-Jie Chen 😷 (@yujiechentw) March 31, 2020

(Go read the whole thread). 

This rebranding of "authoritarian nations" as "the Global South" (a possibly once helpful way of thinking about the world which I think has lost its luster) is a part of what keeps the dumber among liberals still believing in them. 

A big chunk of China's argument for why it should be considered next global leader is that unlike the evil, imperialist, Western United States, China represents a new and better orientation away from the primacy of Western (and therefore historically imperialist) interests in the world. 

There are a lot of people who believe (correctly) that white, Western countries became rich in great part from plundering the wealth of the rest of the world, and that this is one of the great tragedies of history. However, there's a tendency to twist that argument around and insist that as imperialism in all its forms is most visibly white, that it can therefore only be white, and therefore anything "non-Western" must be preferable.

Frankly, I see the appeal. Nothing sounds better than re-orienting towards leadership by people of color who can build a more equitable post-colonial world.

Except, of course, China's not doing that. 

Their goal is not to break down divisions so that the "Global South" may enjoy the same level of development and well-being as the "Global North", which would include things like human rights. It's to cement its position as the permanent leader of these nations, supporting and replicating its own system of anti-humanitarian, authoritarian repression. It wants supplicants. Serfs. It wants its own colonial empire, cloaked in the language of leftie progressivism. 

The WHO is just a tool in that game. And by withdrawing, we're handing it to them.

Usually I say that when it comes to the CCP, the only way to win the game is not to play, but this is absolutely not what I mean. Opposition is not the same as playing. There are games bigger than those devised by the CCP that are worth playing, and this was one of them.

There are better ways, and if the rest of the world would only listen to Taiwan, perhaps they'd see that.

Rather than flouncing off in a huff and leaving the WHO to China, Taiwan has been trying to raise awareness of its exclusion. That not only helps Taiwan's global visibility, it highlights the ways that the CCP has been slowly taking over international organizations. Engaging, petitioning, speaking out, countering - yes, it feels like playing a game we can't win, but honestly, we got pretty far with it. There was an impact, however unsatisfying in the end.

In fact, one of the reasons I admire President Tsai is that she can look at China's ridiculous carnival games - hoops on an angle, balls that are too big for their buckets, weighted milk bottles, carefully-placed tables of a certain height - and see not just the game, but the rigging. If you can see the rigging, you can begin to devise a strategy to get around it. Tsai does this better than any other leader in the world. 

Even when it comes to issues such as framing the discussion on independence or potentially (maybe) gaining diplomatic recognition, she treads like a trained explosives detector across a minefield, not a tank. Trump? He's a tank with a particularly stupid driver.

She's doing that rather marvelously, and Trump is flailing like the screaming racist baby he is. He may be tough on the CCP, and I do actually think he is right about them, but he doesn't know what to do about it. His strategies will fail, because they were ham-fisted to begin with and certainly didn't take into account what's really going on with these games.

This is why Tsai, not Trump - and not "we have a strategic interest to engage" Merkel (translation: $$$), nor "did well with COVID19 but not so much the CCP Virus" Ardern - is the true leader of the free world. 

There is more that Taiwan can do, which I'd like to explore in a later post. There are reasons why pivoting away from the US and towards an "Asian Century" is not a bad idea, as long as that century does not include the CCP - again, for a later post.

What I'm trying to say here is: when deciding exactly how not to play the CCP's games, there is more strategy involved than people realize. It's not always a simple matter of walking away, because other players and bigger concerns need to be dealt with.

Taiwan has figured this out. One of the best strategies we can adopt is simply to listen to Taiwan and other Asian voices when they warn of encroaching CCP authoritarianism. For liberals, that means curbing the tendency to equate "we want to engage with the world and that includes China" with being a good liberal and global citizen. Good liberals don't pretend modern-day Nazis are acceptable negotiation partners and listen to marginalized voices around the world, not just dominant ones. For conservatives, it means ending racist platforms in all ways and actually paying attention to the voices of people of color, rather than acting like white saviors.

For both sides, just listen. The rest of Asia - and especially Taiwan - is telling you what to do and where the traps are.

When will the US and the rest of the world open its ears?