Teacups vs. Plate Tectonics

All of us two weeks ago, on the Buluowan Suspension Bridge, which probably no longer exists

Like just about everyone in Taiwan last week, my Wednesday morning started with a massive shake-up. I sat on the couch drinking my morning coffee with a hefty dollop of doomscrolling and thinking about an upcoming workday which, at 7:57am, was about one minute away from not being a workday at all. 

When the alert hit my phone, my half-caffeinated brain took about two seconds to register that it was not only telling me in English to a coming quake and the need to take cover, but also in Mandarin that it was "significant", with "strong" shaking. I don't know how common it is for alerts to state so clearly the expectation of a major seismic event, but it did give me about three seconds to dive under my dining table and hold on. 

I don't have a particularly interesting story to tell: in fact, the most notable thing about my big earthquake experience is how little I was affected. My clients asked to postpone that day as we were all pretty stunned, and a few cracks appeared in my walls. That's about it. I continued with my plans to go camping the next day, after the organizers of the group confirmed the safety of the site and the tricky road to get there.

Even my teacups survived, and they were adhered to their curio shelf with nothing more than tiny globs of Blue-Tack. This was a particular surprise: one of my thoughts as I crouched under that table afraid for my life had been oh man, those teacups are goners!

Not everyone was so lucky; though no one I know was injured, many others were, and for the rest of the day I watched pictures of my friends' trashed apartments roll across my feed.

And yet, I spent the rest of the day -- now suddenly free to let my mind wander -- in low-grade freakout mode. 

Of course I was worried for Hualien, but this went beyond concern for the welfare of a nearby city. It was something personal; it came from the core. 

These teacups survived the 2024 earthquake

While I crouched under the dining table, my husband (wisely) stayed right where he was in bed, seeing as the frame is too low for either of us to fit underneath it. It was indeed scary to be in two different rooms, able to communicate but not see or help one another. Both of our cats bolted to their favorite inaccessible hiding places; in a truly life-threatening emergency, I would not have been able to grab them. 

Was this the source of my slow-rolling panic attack? Was I spooked that I'd be separated from my core family in Taiwan if the roof literally or figuratively caved in?

That surely played a part, but my gut knew that wasn't the whole of it. 

In Taipei the quake felt like it could have been a real emergency, but in the end it wasn't one. Countless articles have already been written on the surprising resilience of Taiwan, when other countries hit by seismic disasters of similar magnitudes have been devastated. Turkey comes to mind: the Antakya earthquake killed many more. (This strikes a nerve with me as my ancestry weaves through Antakya. I'd been hoping to return).

Or perhaps it's not so surprising: Taiwan also impressed the world with its COVID response, and has built a successful, developed nation despite the world's lack of recognition and the unceasing threat from China.

A death toll that stands at 13 -- though I think it's likely to go up in coming days -- is indeed impressive: like Taiwan's COVID response, it shows that when the country goes through a humanitarian disaster, whether the 1999 earthquake or 2003 SARS epidemic, it learns from it and does better next time. 

Knowing this doesn't seem to have improved my mental state, however.

Perhaps my inability to calm down and face the day stemmed from a trip we'd taken two weeks previously. We took visiting family on a 環島, or 'round the island' journey by train and car -- starting in Hualien. 14 days before the earthquake, almost to the hour, we were in Taroko National Park, navigating the cliff overhangs on the Shakadang Trail. You know, the one where some hikers were killed. We walked on the suspension bridge that appears to no longer exist. We drove over the bit of Suhua Highway that collapsed. Our driver for the day dropped us off at Dongdaemun Night Market to kill time between our day at Taroko Gorge and our dinner reservations; she waited for us across the street from the Uranus Building. 

Was it that? Having been in the exact location of all of these calamities so recently that I hadn't even shared pictures with my in-laws yet? Realizing that I saw Taroko Gorge just two weeks prior to its indefinite closure?

That certainly had something to do with it. It is unnerving to look at a bit of landslid trail or collapsed infrastructure and realize you were just there. But no, that was an insufficient explanation and deep down, I knew it. After all, those who were actually there when the quake happened either didn't survive, or had it immeasurably worse.

Unable to comprehend my own reaction, I sat on my couch, drank tea and stared at my teacups. Almost all of them were Taiwan-made, either by local artisans or a Taiwanese company. Two have a floral pattern commonly associated with Hakka culture (although I'm not sure how accurate the connection is). A few are Japanese and one came from an import store in New York. They're all very delicate, but they've survived up there for longer than anyone could reasonably expect them to. Any number of earthquakes should have brought them crashing to the floor by now. 

I stared at them and dreamed up an alternative reality, or a possible future, where I sit on that same couch drinking that same kind of tea, hearing an alert pop up on my phone as air raid sirens start a horrifying crescendo. I conjured fictitious (for now) Chinese missiles landing nearby. They create more cracks in my walls. My husband is somewhere else; I can't reach him. The cats flee to their secret spots. The cement crumbles, the furniture shakes, and the first teacup is forced free from the sticky tack holding it in place. Then another, and another. 

In this other world, they all eventually tumble and shatter. There is nothing I can do about it. 

It's not quite the same as an earthquake. The missiles are man-made; they're not the result of a natural process. They're not entirely random, and they're not inevitable. Tectonic plates move because that's just what they do. For them to behave differently, Earth would have to be a fundamentally different planet. These missiles I imagined were decided by someone. Earth didn't decide to kill 13 people this past week; it moved because it moves, and 13 people died. But missiles don't just fall on a city; someone fires them. A leader orders them. They are part of a chain of events in which some people choose to kill others.

And yet it is sort of the same as an earthquake, too. In Taiwan, a Chinese attack, like an earthquake, is an ever-present danger. There is little I will be able to do if it happens except dive under my table and hang on. If my husband isn't with me there will be no way to change that.

There's also nothing I can do to stop it from happening in the first place. Sure, someone decides to make bombs fall, but in that moment, what will matter to my life is that, like the earth shaking, bombs are falling.

There's not much Taiwan can do about it either. Diplomacy doesn't work when the other side doesn't keep promises and won't even come to the table unless their counterpart renounces their sovereignty, as China is insisting Taiwan do. Dialogue doesn't work when China isn't interested in hearing Taiwan's utter lack of interest in unification. Assurances don't work when the only assurance China wants -- that unification is possible -- isn't one that Taiwan can sincerely or reasonably offer. 

China will attack Taiwan when it thinks it can win, and no amount of playing nice will change their calculus. Only making the odds of winning less favorable will stop it, and there's only so much Taiwan can do in that regard. 

Like an earthquake, you can prepare, and analyze, and improve the nation's resiliency. A Chinese invasion is not inevitable simply because China could choose not to invade, but sitting here in Taipei, does it matter? It doesn't feel like Taiwan can truly stop China, just as it can't stop an earthquake. If China is determined to start a war because Taiwan can't give it the only thing it wants, there isn't much Taiwan can do to avert it. As with earthquakes, it can only make itself and its public institutions much harder to topple. 

I didn't do anything wrong on Wednesday morning: I dropped, covered and held on when it seemed like it really mattered. Sure, I repeatedly shouted "fucksnacks!" through the whole thing, but that's an understandable reaction. When the shaking stopped, I forced myself to get up, check on my husband, locate my cats' hiding places, survey the apartment to make sure there was no obvious major damage, and start messaging people that we were okay. 

The fear and anxiety didn't subside, though, and I wasn't particularly proud of the fact that all I really wanted was to cower under that table for awhile longer. I didn't want to get up, dust off, check for damage and start communications; I wanted to curl up and hide. That desire amplified the anxiety. Then I started to feel anxious specifically about the anxiety, which made the original anxiety worse. That deterioration led to more anxiety, which accelerated the spiral, and so on.

That's really what drove it: I experienced an almost-emergency over which I had no control. This was as close a taste as I'm likely to get of what it would feel like if China attacked Taiwan without warning. And I did everything right, but I still had a panic attack, and then I had a panic attack about my initial panic attack.

My insistence that I'm going to stay and fight suddenly felt like a hollow gasconade. That I did everything right didn't feel like proof that I have steel nerves, because it was necessary to force myself to accomplish any of it. What if I'm a liability rather than a help because I can't get it together?

That helplessness is utterly terrifying, and it does not matter whether it's a severe earthquake in progress or bombs from some brutal genocidal regime that might kill you.

Like most people who live in Taiwan, I'm always aware of the threats faced by the country I call home. I don't usually let them get to me; a life lived in fear is not really a life. At some point you have to get up, dust off, and go to work. Pay your bills, see your friends, do your chores, do your job, drink your drinks, cook your food, take your trips, read your books, call your parents, feed your cats. 

The Commentariat sometimes fires up this weird narrative that Taiwanese people don't care enough about the threat from China, that they're complacent or ignorant, and thus unprepared. While Taiwan could probably be spending more time and effort on this, the notion that its citizens are blissfully unaware of the looming threat isn't just nonsense, it's a funhouse-mirror distortion of reality. 

People living in Taiwan are aware of the threat pretty much all the time, as they are for earthquakes. But it's not healthy to live in a constant state of heightened anxiety -- that leads to real mental health problems, and I would know. It's also not possible to maintain, and not helpful. 

Living with it for just a day affected my mental state all weekend. Imagine living it every day in a war zone. Some people are living it now, and someone, somewhere, has lived it every single day any one of us has been alive.

Now imagine that, but you're not even in a war zone. You're at the supermarket, or in a cubicle, or in class, hyper aware at all moments that your big bully neighbor could start raining death on everything you love. 

It's no way to live. 

Nobody expects people in an earthquake zone to live in constant fear; they know it pickles the brain. Yet they express surprise that Taiwanese people don't do so as a response to the threat from China. Why?

Taiwan has survived for longer than many thought it would, showing the world the benefits of learning from mistakes and having a plan, as well as taking practical steps so that when disaster strikes and the plan must be executed, it actually works -- Democratic norms, public institutions and civil society must all be robust and well-maintained. Budgets approved, regulations promulgated and double-checked.

These norms and institutions so often seem like abstractions, and the realpolitik crowd would like you to believe they are fragile, easily broken, no real defense against the inevitability of a subjugationist strongman. Yet at least in Taiwan, they appear to be both fragile and surprisingly resilient, at the same time. Teacups can survive an earthquake, if they're well-anchored. Porcelain can stand up to plate tectonics, and win.

I don't know if it's enough, but I suppose it has to be -- for everyone living here including myself.

Do 'most' Chinese really favor outright war with Taiwan? (Sort of, but not really.)

Don't ask how Taiwan should cross the red bridge. Ask whether.

Much fuss was made of a recent study in the Journal of Contemporary China assessing public support in China for various means of annexing Taiwan to China.

The authors don't don't use the term 'annexation', but that's what it would be -- not only does no option for peaceful dialogue leading to mutually-agreed unification appear in their so-called "full range" of policy options, but such an option is indeed unlikely to work. There's no plausible scenario in which Taiwan would want unification with China, and the resultant coercion to achieve that goal is, by definition, annexation.

I'm getting ahead of myself, however. I want to talk about the main finding from this article, published in media such as the South China Morning Post. Their headline reads "Just over half of mainland Chinese people back full-scale war to take control of Taiwan, poll finds". 



                         



I can't read the whole SCMP article as I'm not a subscriber and not interested in becoming one, but it leads with the assertion that "55 per cent in favour of “launching a unification war to take back Taiwan entirely”, with a third opposing it and the remainder saying they were unsure."

That sounds scary indeed. What are we to make of it? To be honest, not that much. I obtained a copy of the original publication -- not necessarily easy as I lost my academic access a few years ago -- and read it to see if it really does support the idea that most Chinese are "in favour" of all-out war to take Taiwan.

Well, that is indeed one possible interpretation of the results. However, I think it's a bit exaggerated, if not outright skewed. I don't just mean that the authors come to more moderate conclusions (though they do), but that I genuinely don't think a careful reading of the study supports the idea that so many are "in favour" of war, so much as they believe war to be one acceptable possibility among many. I'm no master of methodology, but I also think the study has some methodological issues and interpretation bias. 

Let's start with the finding heard 'round the China Watcher Circles. It comes from this figure: 

Yes, it's true that 55% of respondents said they supported "full scale war", with 33% opposed. The opposite -- "separation" -- had 22% acceptance, with 71% opposed. 

I am putting "separation" in quotes because it implies a change in the status quo. However, China and Taiwan are already separated under the status quo -- the PRC does not govern Taiwan -- so there would be no act of separating. It's a telling clue that the authors, despite their best intentions, are biased.

In other words, everything but "separation" was acceptable to the majority. This doesn't imply they are "in favour" of full-scale war. It means they find it one of four acceptable policy options presented, with less-aggressive options also on the table. The exact same number of people support the status quo as full-scale war, with likely quite a bit of overlap.

Although it's impossible to say without more data, one might reasonably infer that many such people would prefer not to resort to full-scale war unless other options are exhausted. Or perhaps many don't actually feel strongly about fighting a war for Taiwan, but feel they have to indicate acceptance for any number of reasons. 

It's still worrying, as when those options fail -- which they will -- these respondents say they find full-scale war an acceptable solution.

However, it's not as scary as 55% of Chinese wanting to go straight to war. I don't know if SCMP clarifies this later in the article as I can't read it, but you wouldn't get that impression from the free-to-read blurb.

The authors, to their credit, do point this out. They even mention that only 19 (not 19%, but 19 respondents total) supported full-scale war as the only option. Not 55%. Not even 19%. 19 people. Here, they explain it a little further: 

A closer look at the data suggest that the respondents largely fall into three categories based on their answers. First, 313 respondents (17.1%) are ‘pacifist’, who found either or both of the two non- aggressive options (‘status quo’ and ‘separation’) acceptable while rejecting the other three options. Second, 572 respondents (31.4%) are ‘bellicose’, who found some or all of the aggressive options (‘sanction’, ‘military coercion’, and ‘full-scale war’) acceptable while rejecting the other two options. Finally, the remainder of the respondents are ‘ambivalent’ (939, or 51.5%), as they endorsed both aggressive and non-aggressive options or were unsure on some or all of the policy options. Importantly, this simple partition of the respondents points to an even smaller share of citizens in support of the aggressive policy options. [Emphasis mine]. In fact, only 19 out of 1,824 respondents (or about one percent of the sample) rejected all but the most extreme option of armed unification.

Basically, to say more than half of respondents "favor full-scale war" is not quite right. More accurately, about half of all respondents favor some move toward unification, but it need not be war and indeed, might be peaceful. One-third view it as unacceptable, and the same percentage who do find war acceptable also 

The authors removed respondents who found all five options acceptable or unacceptable, for a total of 259 removals: 70 who found all options acceptable, and 189 who found all options unacceptable (I'm very curious about what this latter group tends to think are optimal policy options instead, but doubt I'll ever know). That's more people removed for finding both "separation" and "full-scale war" acceptable than people who favored only full-scale war. I do understand that such a response means they probably didn't take the survey seriously, but that it outweighs the number who only support the most bellicose option is, I believe, telling.

Frankly, this isn't surprising. In fact, given the extremely skewed and brainwash-prone education system in China, I would have thought support for military coercion, if not all-out war, would have been higher and support for Taiwanese independence would have been lower. That about one-third of respondents are fine with Taiwan maintaining its independence is actually more hopeful than I would have predicted! 

The authors point this out, too: that support for full-scale war is not as clear-cut as it may seem, and Chinese leadership should understand this. 1/3 of Chinese accepting Taiwanese independence whereas only half wanting war -- and almost no one wanting war as the only option -- is not the solid wall of public support that the CCP needs to attack Taiwan. I can imagine that quite a few Chinese who find war an "acceptable" last resort would nonetheless be very angry if a war were launched without attempting more "peaceful" means first. 

I also want to point out that the authors did not, in fact, include "all" policy options. Although I don't think unification would come of it -- frankly, none of these options would bring about "peaceful" unification, as Taiwanese simply do not want it, and being sanctioned isn't going to change that -- they fail to include "dialogue", "persuasive incentives" or "supporting preferences for unification among Taiwanese" (that is, helping out the unificationists in the KMT or more radical parties such as the New Party), or any truly peaceful means of pushing their agenda. This really isn't a full slate of policy options! 

They further separate "the status quo" and "separation". I could call this bias, but I'll be generous: perhaps they rightly believe that Chinese view these two concepts differently. Perhaps they view "separation" as China officially giving their blessing for Taiwan's sovereignty, and 'the status quo' as China neither recognizing Taiwan's independence nor doing anything about it. While I don't think there's a big difference -- the status quo is that Taiwan is not governed by the PRC, period -- I can understand that Chinese citizens might. 

The authors are indeed fairly reasonable in their interpretations of the data gathered. I'll quote at length here as this study is not readable to all: 

Conventional wisdom holds that the call for armed unification has been ramping up in mainland China in recent years,60 setting the stage for ‘an all-out war . . . devastating to all’.61 Despite the media hype, there is scant empirical evidence indicating the extent to which the Chinese public would support such a war rather than non-violent means to unification. Understanding mass support for the different policy options Beijing could adopt to ‘resolve the Taiwan Question’ is important because we know this is one issue about which public opinion holds sway over Chinese leaders....

We find that at the aggregate level, only a slim majority of the respondents are explicitly supportive of waging a unification war, which has been the focus of current policy debates and academic research, and a third of them are explicitly opposed to it. These numbers are consistent with a survey conducted on an urban sample in 2019,62 thus bolstering our confidence in the external validity of the findings. This also suggests that public support for armed unification has remained relatively stable, despite the rapid deterioration in Beijing’s relations with both Washington and Taipei....

Our study has important policy implications. Both pundits and policy makers who sound the alarm for an imminent or inevitable war in the Taiwan Strait, one that likely would involve the US and its allies, implicitly assume that Beijing’s hands are tied because most Chinese support ‘wutong’ and the public’s patience is wearing thin. An ambitious paramount Chinese leader who cares about his domestic audience can only make things worse. Our findings suggest that this pessimistic outlook may be based more on myth than on reality.

That said, I am not at all sure that they controlled for "social desirability bias" despite claiming to attempt to control for this (however, at least they mentioned it!) Having respondents analyze each option isn't a bad idea, but avoiding social desirability bias first requires guaranteed anonymity -- something that is impossible online in China and that any thoughtful respondent would realize was not necessarily a given. They might have opted in, but also been thinking (not without reason) that someone, somewhere was monitoring the answers.

Avoiding social desirability bias also requires evaluating questions carefully so as not to induce answers that respondents might think are "acceptable". The authors claim to have done that by avoiding the term "Taiwan independence" (smart), but as above, they did not offer all the possible non-military policy options, instead presenting two non-coercive and three somewhat or very coercive choices. That is, more coercive choices than non-coercive ones. Respondents might therefore feel a nudge that it's "better" to choose some form of coercive method, even if it's just sanctions, rather than none at all. Given the chance to say any or all given option is acceptable, why not also choose the one that the government so plainly wants you to support (war), as you can also choose the one you might think is more reasonable (such as sanctions)?

Regarding that bias, the authors do point out the role of the education system in China. They're clearly aware of the role of oft-repeated propaganda. That said, I'm still not sure they truly understood the impact this might have on the results. When people are fed fairly simple slogans (think "national rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation!" or, in Taiwan years ago, "long live the Three Principles of the People!") they might repeat those slogans in a "normal" and peaceful environment. It's so normalized that there probably isn't much of a second thought -- you repeat the slogan without much thought for the actual policy underpinning it or its details. How many Taiwanese once chanted "long live the Three Principles!" without thinking or caring much about what the Three Principles actually were?

I don't see a way to control for this: as with polls showing most Taiwanese are willing to fight to defend Taiwan, we can only gauge what respondents say they believe about war in the moment, not what they'd think or do under actual wartime circumstances. However, Taiwanese aren't pushed by society, education and the government every day to engage in sloganeering and not think too much: everyone is free to say they'd fight or not. You won't be put on a watchlist. That is to say, it's more difficult if not impossible to truly control for social desirability bias in an authoritarian regime. Offering five different options for analysis is insufficient to counter such inculcation. Why not acknowledge this?

Although I applaud where the authors attempt to either reduce or confront bias regarding outcomes, some parts of the introduction and analysis have me scratching my head. Towards the end they reference "The Taiwan Question" -- a heavily loaded term that has connoted genocide when used to describe other groups such as Jewish people and Armenians -- seemingly without much thought. They treat the 1992 Consensus as a real agreement between the two sides, when it was not a consensus and not even called such until 2000. Taiwan/China history is presented in a way that makes it seem as though Taiwan actually was fully controlled by China before 1895, when it wasn't. It was considered and treated as a colony, and for most of the centuries China "controlled" Taiwan, they only really controlled the western third or so. Total Chinese governance of all of Taiwan didn't last long at all. 

To their credit, they do not use the term "reunify" except in quotes, although they pepper the term "mainland" a little too liberally and do call it "returning" and "national unification", forgetting that, of course, Taiwan is not part of the current PRC "nation" and that Taiwan does not have a mainland. Taiwan "returning" to China is used only in reference to what respondents might believe; nevertheless, it's not in quotes -- it's treated as the appropriate term. While overall the authors do take a moderate tone, little things like this worry me.

They spend a lot of time going over China's position, and the US's as well. Taiwan's position doesn't get much space, however. It's limited to Tsai's "refusal" to accept the "1992 Consensus" (which is not called out as fabricated at any point), and this half a paragraph:

In Taiwan, the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University, which has been tracking the unification versus independence stances of the Taiwanese since 1994, reported the smallest pro- unification margin in 2022. In the same year, as much as 73% of Taiwanese explicitly expressed their willingness to fight should the mainland use force.

Cool, but they don't actually say that unificationism enjoys support that is more or less tied with the margin of error, and they don't mention that most Taiwanese identify as solely Taiwanese, not Chinese at all.

Towards the end, the authors imply (although don't outright say) that unification would be a good thing. They do directly state that Taiwan's annexation would be a "return": 

One contribution of our survey is that we move beyond the focus on armed unification. In doing so, we provide a more nuanced understanding of public preferences for a broad range of peaceful and non-peaceful policy options that Beijing could adopt in achieving unification during Tsai’s second term: military coercion short of full-scale war, economic sanctions, and embracing the status quo and waiting patiently for Taiwan’s return.

Okay, but why would anyone outside China want to "achieve unification"? Yes, the point is to see how Chinese feel about these policies the CCP "could adopt", but something about the tone is off. The authors are careful academics who do not say that the less violent but still coercive options might be good choices for China, but it sure reads as though they assume that putting some short-of-war pressure on Taiwan might not necessarily be a bad thing.  

Even where they don't offer a fully China-centric perspective, their word choices give questionable vibes:
 

Furthermore, we find all of these policies receive levels of support similar to that for full-scale war. And quite surprisingly, about one fifth of the respondents even find acceptable the unthinkable option of allowing the two sides to go their separate ways, which is tantamount to de facto independence for Taiwan.

What does "de facto" mean here? Taiwan is already de facto independent; that's a present reality. Why treat it as a future outcome? "Go their separate ways"? China and Taiwan are already governed separately! And sure, Taiwanese independence is "unthinkable" to the Chinese government. But why is Taiwan independence unthinkable in any broader sense that justifies its use without quotation marks? It is indeed very thinkable -- I think about it all the time! 

Although the authors do state a Chinese victory would be "pyrrhic", their choices regarding what background to include, as well as their word choice, indicate to me that they view the somewhat-coercive policy options as part of a potentially reasonable, justifiable endgame.  It all sounds very neutral on the surface, but I have to ask whether the language choices reveal a potential bias.

Of course, there is a difference between gauging what respondents think and what is actually true. For example, a discussion of what Chinese responders might think of the KMT and its ability to "facilitate the peaceful resolution of a cross-strait crisis" might differ markedly from what the KMT could actually do: that is to say, not a lot without general public approval. They might win in 2024, but that does not mean they have a mandate from the Taiwanese people to negotiate away Taiwan's sovereignty. They simply do not.

Also consistent with existing survey findings about Chinese public attitudes towards the western world,53 respondents with better knowledge about PLA development are more likely to prefer the more aggressive policy options. And those who believed that a KMT government could better facilitate the peaceful resolution of a cross-strait crisis in the future were more ambivalent, possibly hoping the KMT will win the 2024 election after Tsai’s second term. 

It's telling, however, that they don't differentiate much. They call it a "peaceful resolution of a cross-strait crisis" as though that's what selling Taiwan to China would actually be; they are not clear that this is how Chinese respondents might view the situation. They do not examine the possibility -- dare I say likelihood -- that a KMT win does not mean that Taiwanese are receptive to unification. There is difference to be explored here, and the authors do not explore it. They seem to equate "cross-strait peace" with the pro-China leanings of the KMT, as though the only obvious way to ensure "peace" is to move toward unification. The opposite is true: a decisive move toward unification is just as likely to precipitate war.

All in all, I do believe the researchers had good intentions. They don't seem to be unificationists even though some of the language employed and assumptions made were at times questionable. There was insufficient differentiation between language used to describe general sentiment in China (not "the truth", but Chinese perspectives), and the actual situation between Taiwan and China. 

Some flaws in the study, e.g. the difficulty if not impossibility in guaranteeing confidentiality, without which controlling social desirability bias is impossible, were not discussed from a methodological perspective. 

While the authors were circumspect and careful in their own interpretation of the findings, SCMP's portrayal of them, at least the lede presented in the 'free' nubbin of text, is highly questionable. I may have questions about the study, but the media is the bigger problem here. Can we really say that 55% of Chinese "favor" full-scale war when the exact same percentage can be said to "favor" the status quo?

Although I have some questions about the study itself, the overall findings don't fill me with concern, and they shouldn't worry you all that much, either. 

Although SCMP may not agree, if Liu and Li's research should keep anyone up at night, it's CCP officials who do need solid, large-majority public support for a full-scale war for Taiwan. Without it, everything from protests to difficulty conscripting soldiers who will fight fiercely for Taiwan will be more difficult and internal governance will be far more challenging. Right now, it seems they don't actually have the support they truly need. 

Perhaps they should heed the 55% who find the status quo acceptable, not the 55% who find war acceptable. If they're not the exact same 55%, it's probably pretty close.

And no one at all should heed the South China Morning Post.

The real-world consequences of US-China "Great Power" thinking

As usual, China-Taiwan commentators not from or based in Taiwan sound like sad old hamburger waiters prattling on about sauces.

It's not often that I write a whole post based on one fantastically stupid tweet, but here we are on this warm Sunday morning. 

Supporters of Taiwan have been more vocal in recent years, pushing back on the trope that conflict "over Taiwan" would fundamentally be a US-China issue, that the entire war scenario would be the outcome of a rivalry between these two nations. 

This is obviously wrong: Taiwan isn't some piece of land being fought over, it's a country full of people who have their own lives, thoughts, beliefs and desires. Those beliefs and desires are central to the issue, not some side discussion.

At its core, this is the China-Taiwan conflict: China insists on annexing Taiwan, but Taiwan will never accept being part of China. China will accept no other resolution. Taiwan will never cede itself, will never choose peaceful unification. They know what life is like under CCP rule; regardless, most Taiwanese don't think of themselves as Chinese, aren't governed by China and don't want to be part of China. There's no alternative, no compromise. How can there be, given the total lack of respect China has for both agreements and democracy? 

This is the heart of it: not the US, not some "Great Game", not a rivalry between two countries or two military buildups. And no, the desire of the Taiwanese people to continue to govern themselves is not some US psyops campaign. It's organic and began in Taiwan.

China wants Taiwan but Taiwan does not want to be part of China. That's it. Taiwan is right and China is wrong, because all Taiwan wants is to govern itself in peace, whereas China is a brutal dictatorship willing to start a war. China's demands are top-down: they come from the CCP. In Taiwan, the people don't want to be part of China. It's not the same, it's not US-driven, and this matters.

There is one peaceful resolution, then: China must be deterred.

Enter the stupid tweet: 

Striking that some think talking about destroying TSMC in a Taiwan war is too hot.

US bases and territory - and possibly the homeland - would very likely be under direct attack.

Nuclear weapons would be on the table. China gets it. That’s why it’s in nuclear breakout. 1/

— Elbridge Colby (@ElbridgeColby) May 6, 2023

This is what happens when you do, in fact, lose sight of the fundamentals of this conflict and think of everything in terms of the US, or the US vs. China. That every outcome is a result of something the US or China does, and not the will of Taiwan or simply what happens in wartime.

The basic assumption here is that in the event of China invading Taiwan that someone might actively blow up TSMC, wreaking havoc on global chip supply and multiple technology sectors.

China probably wouldn't do this, as they want that sweet, sweet tech. But the US probably wouldn't either, as TSMC's chips are central to the global economy. I don't think Taiwanese military forces would do this, because the country wants to be able to recover post-war. Besides, it would not be necessary.

TSMC has said rather openly that their own fabs would be "inoperable" if China invaded Taiwan. Here's the full quote: 

"Nobody can control TSMC by force. If you take a military force or invasion, you will render TSMC factories non-operable.  Because this is a sophisticated manufacturing facility, it depends on the real-time connection with the outside world. With Europe, with Japan, with the US. From materials to chemicals to spare parts to engineering software diagnosis. It's everybody's effort to make this factory operable. So if you take it over by force, it can no longer be operable."

They themselves have also said that chips are not as important as, well, democracy:

"Had there been a war in Taiwan, probably the chip is not the most important thing we should worry about. Because [after this invasion] is the destruction of the world rule-based order, the geopolitical landscape would totally change."

This is not something one side would do intentionally to harm the other, not a strategy US would employ to fight China -- it is simply what would happen if war broke out. It is not related to attacks "on the homeland" or "US bases". 

This has real-world consequences. Once we start talking about TSMC's destruction as though it's something the US would do, people freak out at the "hot war" scenarios of the US, perhaps even call it provocative or unnecessarily aggressive. Support for standing with Taiwan erodes, perhaps this is felt in the electoral realm and we choose governments that will abandon Taiwan to China, all because we think our own involvement would involve "destroying" TSMC, when that was never, and could never be, on the table.

I thought for awhile about whether TSMC would wreck itself in the advent of war. Perhaps, but I don't think so: they wouldn't have to. The operation TSMC runs is so sophisticated, so high-tech, that it would survive neither physical threats -- bombs, fires -- nor a disruption in global supply chain logistics.

Liu says it himself: this isn't a simple factory we're talking about. It's not something anyone could build. If anyone in China had the ability to do what TSMC does, they would already be doing it. That's true for anyone in the world: if they could, they would, and they're not because they can't.

A lot of commentators underestimate or misunderstand the level of sophistication at the design, machine and systems level required to make chips this advanced. They seem to think it's just mechanical arms stamping out chips. That a clean room is just really well-swept. That employees lose days of sleep to handle the tiniest issues because Asians are just extremely hardworking, not because the "tiniest issue" could cost millions of dollars (TSMC managers want a good night's sleep just like everyone else; they're not excited by those 2am calls). 

Thus they don't understand that those machines require constant, careful maintenance, constant supplies of all sorts of weird chemicals and elements not only in the chips themselves but for the etching process. In a war, the gas wouldn't make it to Taiwan, let alone the fabs, and the workers wouldn't either. It would be days, if not hours, before the whole thing went -- for lack of a more accurate term -- tits up. 

Nobody needs to "destroy" or bomb anything. It would just be. It would be an inevitable by-product of war. 

This is what Mark Liu was trying to tell us, and this is what we clearly didn't hear in our haze of "US vs. China, big rivalry, oh no!" 

Mark Liu's words are carefully chosen -- retired founder Morris Chang would not have made him his successor if they weren't -- and there's really no room for discussion on things like "People in Taiwan have earned their democratic system and they want to choose their way of life", that China will "think twice" on the consumer market chip supply disruption they themselves would experience, and an invasion would be "lose-lose-lose".

It matters that this is coming from the head of a company that is neither 'blue' nor 'green'. TSMC stays out of domestic politics in that way, unlike, say, Foxconn's founder Terry Gou. I don't know which way either Morris Chang or Mark Liu lean, and I'm not sure it matters. Both the KMT and DPP have tried to tap Chang for public roles -- or at least it's speculated that they have -- and the company has donated to both parties (as of 2009, they donated somewhat more to the KMT but I don't know what the numbers are now). 

However, it does matter that the consistent message from TSMC is that they want to do business, and war is bad for business (if you're, say, a communist who hates business, fine, but you're probably posting about it on social media using a device that uses a TSMC chip.) 

It also matters that their bottom line on Taiwan differs from Terry "sell it all to China for cash" Gou: Chang has said Taiwan should be a part of the developed world's "friendshoring" -- that is, countries that aren't China -- and Liu is quite clear that Taiwan is Taiwan, and they absolutely do not work with the Chinese military (unlike Foxconn, of which I'm deeply suspicious). This is not a company that will throw its hands up and hand its tech over to China.

If China insists on annexing Taiwan, that means war as is no possibility of Taiwan peacefully accepting subjugation that they do not want. Regardless of US actions, that would render TSMC inoperable. Thus, there is truly only one solution that avoids a global tech sector catastrophe: China must be deterred. 

Taiwan could get what it wants peacefully, if China could indeed be deterred. All it wants is what it already has: sovereignty from the PRC, self-governance. A continuation, and perhaps a recognition of the facts as they currently sit. 

This is not a warning to the US to "not provoke China", as some have taken it. The problem (for once) is not the US, it's that China wants something it cannot have. It's a warning to China, not from the US but from the biggest player in the Taiwanese private sector, to leave Taiwan alone for their own good as much as anyone else's. 

The US isn't going to destroy TSMC because that would happen anyway, as a result of Chinese actions. We must not base our opinions on how to support Taiwan on fairy tales and fabrications.

China is raising tensions all by itself, threatening war all on its own. It would be doing that without the US around, because the core of the conflict sits in Asia. They're not responding to the US, they're mad that Taiwan isn't interested in being ruled by them, and Taiwan is not wrong to want to remain independent.

This is not a discussion of whether the US should or should not bomb TSMC if China invades, because that's stupid. Don't be stupid. 

If China invades, TSMC won't need to be bombed by anyone, because it won't survive the war. The chairman has said that obliquely. There's no hidden meaning, no chiaroscuro of possible outcomes. If China starts a war, this will happen. If that will impact the global economy -- and it will -- then China must be deterred. 

Good reporting centers Taiwanese agency

Taking a bit of a risk with my weird graphic, but I like it. 

I don't think of the Economist as an accurate source of news on Taiwan. They report on Taiwan with some frequency, but in terms of relative merits to flaws, their articles are at best middle-of-the-road. At worst, they're unequivocally terrible. Occasionally, the magazine puts out something surprisingly good on Taiwan, but don't ask me for an example from the past right now as I can't think of one.

One of the chief problems with their Taiwan coverage hounds other publications as well: their disturbing tendency to deny Taiwan any agency in its own narrative. Stories ostensibly about Taiwan might barely reference what's actually going on there; to a reader who doesn't actively consider what they're reading, they might come away with the vague, unsettling impression that Taiwan is a barren rock that other countries fight over, just a piece of land to be won or lost. 

It would be easy from this sort of writing to assume Taiwan doesn't have any people living on it at all. 

Great powers fight over it, threats are levied against it, claims are made on its territory, but Taiwan might as well be Olive Oyl (thanks to a friend for that analogy) -- standing their whimpering in the general vicinity of the muscle men who want to possess her but with no apparent personality of her own. Whatever Taiwan itself wants is apparently not relevant to its own story or future. 

I don't know why reporters do this. I would imagine at least some of them have actually been to Taiwan, met and talked to Taiwanese people. They can't possibly think Taiwan is merely some trophy to be won or lost, a square on a chessboard that, if it could express itself, wouldn't have anything to say. They can't possibly believe that the views of Taiwanese people exist only as reflections of whatever China or the US want them to think.

And yet, this is how they write. It is simply bad reporting and in any other context, I daresay it would be more robustly called out as the racism that it is. 

With this in mind, two articles appeared recently in The Economist that show the effect better reporting can have on disseminating global understanding of Taiwan. I'd like to compare them, to elucidate what can be considered good writing on Taiwan, and differentiate it from the crap.

"America and China are preparing for a war over Taiwan", which appeared in the Storm Warning brief with no byline, is pretty bad, though not wholly irredeemable. "Taiwan is a vital island that is under serious threat" by Alice Su is far superior. 

You can tell by the titles: the former foregrounds the US and China, implying that they are making similar or parallel moves regarding Taiwan, although this is not the case. China is preparing to start a war in Taiwan. The US is preparing for the possibility of having to help Taiwan defend itself. Taiwan may as well be an inanimate pawn in this headline, a battered toy for two cats who've got the zoomies to tussle over. 

The latter references Taiwan in the first word rather than the last, and immediately references something about it. The US and China don't even appear in it. "Vital" can mean something like vibrant, or lively -- but it can also mean crucial or (strategically) important. Both are true, and I'd argue the more human definition is just as meaningful as the geostrategic one.

Of course, writers don't typically get final say over the titles of published articles. The Storm Warning article might have been mauled by some squash-brained editor who didn't know better, but have solid content. 

This was not the case. The article is just as bad as the headline implies. Here's how it starts: 

Their faces smeared in green and black, some with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles on their packs, the men of “Darkside”—the 3rd battalion of America’s 4th marine regiment—boarded a pair of Sea Stallion helicopters and clattered away into the nearby jungle. Their commanders followed in more choppers carrying ultralight vehicles and communications gear. Anything superfluous was left behind. No big screens for video links of the sort used in Iraq and Afghanistan: to avoid detection, the marines must make sure their communications blend into the background just as surely as their camouflage blends into the tropical greenery. The goal of the exercise: to disperse around an unnamed island, link up with friendly “green” allies and repel an amphibious invasion by “red” forces. 

All I can say is woof. I can't fault the writing style, as the delayed lede allows for creative scene-setting that draws the reader in. But come on! We've got all this big macho US army energy, references to Iraq and Afghanistan, Taiwan as an "unnamed" island. I understand why all these narrative choices were made, but the cumulative effect is not one of a real island full of real people whose choices are at the center of it all, but two massive military industrial complexes itching to go at it.

I hate defending the US and will do so as rarely as possible, but just by the facts, the US is not planning to invade Taiwan as they did Iraq or Afghanistan. That would be China's intention. 

I know the opening doesn't say this, and does not really criticize US military involvement in Taiwan -- in fact, I get the sense the author supports it -- but it does draw an implicit connection, and I fear this is what readers will take away.

Compare that to the opening of Su's piece:

When Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, announced the extension of military conscription in December 2022, she called it an “incomparably difficult decision”. Taiwan’s young were previously subject to only four months of conscription. Starting from 2024, they will serve a year each, with improved training. “No one wants war,” she said. “But peace will not fall from the sky.” Taiwan must prepare for war, she added, to prevent it.

Without hesitation, the article dips into the situation in Taiwan, providing crucial context about the decisions Taiwan is making and why. Readers get the immediate sense that Taiwan is defined not just by its land but its people, and they have a government and thoughts and feelings and choices and lives. The reader is invited to consider Taiwan for its own sake, and what it might feel like to be in Taiwan with this huge threat looming over you. 

The following paragraphs follow up on this, and the focus does not shift from Taiwan until the third paragraph. 

To be clear, I don't agree with everything Su says here. She calls Taiwan "numb to China's threat" (which is not true) and asks "whether" Taiwan is willing to defend itself. People aren't numb, they're tired and worried and don't want to fret themselves into migraines and insomnia every day, so they compartmentalize it in order to live normally. It's exhausting to spend each day wondering at what point in the future your neighbor's going to press the button on those missiles he's got pointed at you.

I don't think Taiwan has "no consensus on who they are", either. Most Taiwanese identify as solely Taiwanese; the vast majority who identify as both Taiwanese and Chinese prioritize Taiwanese identity. Most say they are willing to defend their country, and most consider Taiwan's current status to be sufficient qualification to be considered independent. There is virtually no support for immediate unification and not very much for eventual unification, either. Most don't want a war, which is probably the main reason why they say they prefer "the status quo". Of course, I can't be sure, this is just a feeling based on anecdotal observation.  Frozen Garlic discusses this in his redux of the relevant poll; I suggest you read it.

Anyway, that sure sounds like a string of consensuses to me! Exactly what kind of country Taiwan is, and how it will defend itself against China, are still relevant questions and ongoing debates. Whether it is a country and whether it should unify with China, however? Though there will always be dissenters, those questions seem fairly settled.

That said, for the purposes of comparing two journalistic approaches to Taiwan, these are the nitpicks of a crotchety old git who has the diabeetus and puts ice cubes in her tea. I shake my cane at you! But truly, Su's article is pretty good. It takes every opportunity to foreground Taiwan and Taiwanese agency, and thus implies to the reader that this is a place that matters, these are people not too different from you, and they matter. It shows the reader that Taiwan has its own internal workings, can make its own decisions, and has its own views on China's aggression. 

This implies that the possibility of war is not because two superpowers are bored and feel like duking it out over some rock. It's because China wants to annex Taiwan, and the Taiwanese do not want this. 

Taiwan has agency, and that agency not only matters but is at the core of the conflict: Taiwan is unwilling to do what China demands, and China wants to take their agency away. How would you feel if someone wanted to annex your land, murder your kid for attending a protest, tell you that you don't get a say?

Without it being made explicit, this sort of story asks the reader to consider these questions, perhaps subconsciously. This rings clear throughout Su's piece, even as I may disagree on the details. 

In fact, after a few more paragraphs we get this gem, which I consider the nut graf but probably isn't:

As Chinese pressure on Taiwan grows, the Taiwanese look for the world’s support. Taiwan stands “at the vanguard of the global defence of democracy”, Ms Tsai has said. To let it go under would be a devastating step towards the might-is-right world that both Mr Xi and Russia’s Vladimir Putin seem to favour.

Instead of starting off with what's happening in the Taiwan/China/US Torment Nexus (protip: don't create the Torment Nexus) to Iraq and Afghanistan, two places where the US screwed up massively, it chiefly describes Taiwan's critical juncture to the resistance against Putin's war in Ukraine. This is the better analogy. 

To be fair, the Storm Warning piece does this too, and compares Xi's irredentism to Putin's. I support this, because it's true. But compare one of their typical paragraphs: 

America, meanwhile, is sending more military trainers to Taiwan. The Taiwanese government recently increased mandatory military service from four months to a year. Prominent congressmen have urged President Joe Biden to learn from Russia’s attack on Ukraine and give Taiwan all the weapons it may need before an invasion, not after one has started. Adding to the sense of impending crisis are America’s efforts to throttle China’s tech industry and Mr Xi’s growing friendliness with Russia.

With one from Su's piece: 

Taiwan has not made up its mind how or even whether to defend itself. It is at once the “most dangerous place in the world” yet numb to China’s threat. Only since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has serious debate about a possible Chinese invasion become normal. That is in part because China’s Communist Party is engaged in an information war designed to sow confusion. It also reflects Taiwan’s tortuous history and politics.

One frames the Ukraine conflict mostly in terms of what the US and China think about it. The other uses it to help the reader understand Taiwan's internal workings.

When it can finally turn its gaze from the US and its Big Tank Energy, it talks about what China claims and how it acts vis-à-vis Taiwan: 

China’s Communist leaders have claimed Taiwan since Nationalist forces fled to it after losing a civil war in 1949. America has long pledged to help the island defend itself. But in recent years, on both sides, rhetoric and preparations have grown more fevered. China’s forces often practise island landings. Its warships and fighter jets routinely cross the “median line” (in effect Taiwan’s maritime boundary) and harass military ships and planes of America and its allies. After Nancy Pelosi, at the time the Speaker of America’s House of Representatives, visited Taiwan last year, China fired missiles towards it.

These are all important details, but shifting focus from the US, everything is now centered around China. The two countries' preparations are "fevered", there are warships and fighter jets and and rhetoric and missiles and some other kind of ships and Nancy Pelosi. 

What there isn't? Anything Taiwan might think or want or even an acknowledgement that 23.5 million people maybe have a role to play and a lot at stake. 

It gets worse. Later on, if you're still reading this Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire-sized article (Brendan's joke about that book: "it takes as long to read as it took to happen"), you get this: 

Given the appalling consequences, would America and China really go to war? Chinese officials say their preferred option is still peaceful unification, and deny there is any timetable for an attack.

OKAY, but Taiwan is never going to accept or choose peaceful unification because they see how badly the Chinese government treats its own citizens, including but not limited to Hong Kong, Tibet and East Turkestan! That "peaceful unification" is not possible, that Taiwan has an opinion on this, that the world has to lie to China to prevent invasion (for now) isn't mentioned -- only that China claims it wants peace. That China knows Taiwan will never choose unification, and yet has not renounced the use of force, should tell you everything about what China wants: war. If they didn't, they'd commit to no war, because it is very easy to not invade your neighbor. 

What's more, this paragraph not only never explores how Taiwan feels about the "appalling cost of war" even though they'd be the most affected, it also implies that China might choose to back off from invasion because it would be bad for Taiwan, some of their troops, and the global economy. LOL. Do you think China cares? I don't.

Worse yet, the wording outright states that all this horror would be caused by "the US and China [going] to war", not China starting a war. 

It continues like this; I read and read, and everything was US, China, US, China, war, war, invasion, imminent war. In many paragraphs Taiwan wasn't even mentioned even though this is where the war would take place! You don't get any meaningful engagement with Taiwan's potential actions until a paragraph somewhere in the potbellied middle of this extremely long piece.

Is it a counter to China's claims, which appear near the top? Perhaps some insight into what is happening in Taiwan right now as they face this threat? Nope. It's more guns and bombs and artillery and rockets:  

Taiwan’s strategy, meanwhile, is to thwart China’s initial landing or prevent it from bringing enough troops. Taiwanese forces would block ports and beaches with sea mines, submerged ships and other obstacles. Backed by surviving aircraft and naval vessels, they would strike China’s approaching force with missiles and pound disembarking Chinese troops with artillery and rockets. Some PLA texts suggest that Taiwan has underwater pipelines off its beaches that could release flammable liquid. Some of its outlying islands are protected by remote-controlled guns.

The fact that Taiwan's extremely justified refusal to be annexed by China (and China's inability to accept this) is at the core of this conflict is simply not worth mentioning, apparently. It's just Anger McRagersons chucking rockets at each other thousands of miles away. The visuals here imply little islands out in the ocean whose primary feature is guns. The implication? This war is stupid, everyone sucks, and the US should stay out of it. If Taiwan falls, so what? It's some random island in the middle of nowhere, it can't be of any importance. I don't want another Iraq or Afghanistan! 

Nevermind that US assistance to Taiwan could be one of the most crucial obstacles standing between Taiwan's subjugation by China, much as the world's support of Ukraine helps Ukraine stave off Russia each day. 

Surely readers know Taiwan has people; some might even realize that the population of Taiwan rivals Australia (and how would you feel if Australia were invaded by a hostile foreign dictatorship?). To the writers, however, it may as well be a fortress stuffed with incendiaries and nothing more. 

I do understand the point of all this -- it's not meant to be a human story, it's intended to be focused on  military tactics. I don't think the article is totally without merit. The various war scenarios provide useful information regarding what a war in Taiwan might actually look like, for readers who don't know. There are worthwhile details about military readiness sprinkled throughout. However, the overall effect is one of BAM BOOM BOOM BANG KAPOW by two big armies over some pile of rocks.

Perhaps we need these sorts of stories. People should be able to learn about what the US is doing abroad, and what it's facing. Isn't there a way to tell that story without ignoring Taiwan almost completely, though? 

Su takes a more holistic approach. She continues with the Ukraine analogies and makes the case for Taiwan both from a global economic and internal perspective: 

Taiwan also has outsize importance in the world economy. A conflict over Taiwan would do a lot more damage even than Russia’s war on Ukraine. Taiwan makes more than 60% of the world’s semiconductors, which power everything from mobile phones to guided missiles, and 90% of the most advanced sort. Rhodium Group, a research outfit, estimates that a Chinese blockade of Taiwan could cost the world economy more than $2trn.

Taiwan’s leaders know that neither strong democracy nor economic importance is enough. The Ukraine war has taught them that a small country bullied by a bigger neighbour must demonstrate that it has the will to resist. Fight back, and there is more chance that the world will come to your aid. But Taiwan is not ready to fight.

The Storm Warning piece also references the global economy in a very similar paragraph, but never ties it in or brings it back to Taiwan. The best you ever get is this: 

A war game by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, another American think-tank, found that under its “base scenario” Taiwanese, American and Japanese forces typically severed PLA supply lines after about ten days, stranding some 30,000 Chinese troops on the island. Taiwan survived as an autonomous entity, but was left with no electricity or basic services. America and Japan suffered, too, losing 382 aircraft and 43 ships, including two American aircraft-carriers. China lost 155 planes and 138 ships.

Even in a paragraph about the aftermath and cost of war, Taiwan gets one sentence. Then it's back to what America and China lose. 

While the Storm Warning piece ostensibly about Taiwan never gets any better about actually including Taiwan in the narrative, it's in the warp and weft of Su's work. 

This is what we need more of. Even the military-focused stories should spend more time considering Taiwan's own perspective and role, and what Taiwan has to lose. This is how we get readers to actually see what war would mean, and consider that it wouldn't happen to a place, but to people. 

Of course, one can argue that the Economist published both because the angles are so different: one focuses on Taiwan, the other on the US and China. Three players in one drawn-out story. I can understand that, but taken on its own, the Storm Warning piece is almost comical in how actively it ignores Taiwan. The Economist has a paywall, not everyone reads every article (many can't), and there's no way to make a social media post with two fully-displayed link headers. Good intentions or not, the Storm Warning piece on its own erases Taiwan.

Do we really need these US-China Go Boom-Boom pieces? Arguably yes, but they lack crucial context. Could the useful military and war scenario information be included in something a little less dismissive of Taiwan itself? Perhaps stories like tome in this Storm Watch might at least attempt to include the Taiwanese perspective, or even question whether China is right to claim Taiwan, or their "peaceful unification" talk is possible or meaningful?

Then, beyond how many different types of Big Guns and Ships and Rockets the US and China can chuck at each other, readers might understand that this is a country full of people and they play a crucial role in their own story. 

In other words, in a story theoretically about Taiwan, at least some of the focus should actually be on Taiwan.

The anti-war position, and what I no longer hear

                  

I'm not here to start a war with China. This should be obvious. My anti-war position ought not to be considered unconventional, and yet it so often is.

What do I mean? Well, to me, the only sensible anti-war position for Taiwan is to porcupine itself into an undesirable conquest for China -- call it "avoiding war by preparing for war" if you want, but I consider it to be "making the attack that China has fixated on seem as untenable and costly as possible".

This is especially vital when it's become apparent that there is no diplomatic solution acceptable to both China and Taiwan. China will only accept complete authority over Taiwan. Taiwan will never accept any Chinese authority over its sovereignty. There's no middle ground; one side isn't going to get what they want and if we care at all about democratic norms and human rights, that side must be China.

It also means engaging with the international community through any channels that present themselves. This means engagement with the much-reviled United States and normalizing visits from high-level officials. 

It means noticing the difference in China's tone when it's an official visitor they assume the world won't care about, vs. Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi's visit didn't antagonize China: China chose to act aggrievèd when they could have simply...not. If China got poked in the eye, then they picked up the stick and did it to themselves.

It means doing these things even as China whorls and wails and fustigates in anguish that the world would dare to disagree with them that Taiwan is not, indeed, their territory.

If anything deters China from an attempt at brutal annexation, it will be these steps. Preparation, international solidarity, normalization of Taiwan's status (including through unofficial channels), standing firm as the shills and quislings crackle and wail in despair. 

Don't back down, do prepare yourselves, don't let China decide the shape of the fight because they will certainly red-line you into a corner: this is the anti-war position. 

What's the pro-war position -- the support for a series of events that will certainly lead to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? Appeasing the CPC. Respecting every red line it throws down as sacrosanct. Moving away from international engagement because it's always a "move likely to anger China", not challenging China's attempt to dominate the discourse and lexis of how the world talks about Taiwan ("split in 1949" and "reunification" reporters, I am indeed looking right at you.) Taiwan not preparing itself because that "raises tensions". Insisting that Taiwan's current sovereignty does not constitute independence, when it absolutely does.

This is often cloaked in the language of "engaging China" or "diplomatic solutions" It's called the "anti-war" position, but it's the opposite. It's really just appeasement -- letting China draw its lines wherever it wants like a sugared-up kid with an Etch-a-Sketch and a bad attitude. Telling Taiwan to make itself metaphorically smaller as the lines cut closer, because keeping what it already has also "raises tensions". And somehow, someway, that's read as Taiwan's fault. 

You want a bloody subjugation of Taiwan? Because all that appeasement is exactly how you get it.

All that said, imagine my utter lack of surprise when people -- and this has happened more than once -- shoot back that people like me, with the true anti-war position, are encouraging the war machine over a conflict we won't be fighting, in a nation we won't be defending. 

There's an easy parry for me, personally: it's wrong. I fully intend to stay and defend Taiwan. I'm not sure how, as I'm not much of a fighter, but surely volunteers will be needed to grow sweet potatoes, make Molotovs and do basic nursing. 

But there's a more difficult moral divide here that I'm not sure gets explored enough: the whole insult -- you want to plunge Taiwan into war when you won't be around to fight that war -- begs the question. It assumes that people like me (pro-Taiwan long-term foreigners) generally advocate for war.

But we don't. 

Appeasement is far more likely to lead to that conflict than deterrence. Appeasement is quite literally easing China's way toward invasion. We know this because China, not the US or Taiwan, will start that war when they feel that victory is achievable. Why make it easier for the CPC?

I might not feel this way if a diplomatic solution existed, but none does. So either China is deterred, or there is a war. I prefer that China be deterred: the anti-war position.

There's a third problem, too: deciding to stay and fight or escape is morally fraught. Less so for me -- I don't have children I'd need to get to safety, and my loved ones in the US are well cared-for. But I do worry about how I would be able to afford to live in a war-torn land where I am not a citizen, presumably when my job's just been blown up. I don't have local relatives to help out. I do have friends, but they'll have their own stresses. And it is a rather larger commitment than most people realize: pledging to defend a country that doesn't offer most long-termers dual nationality, which it readily extends to ROC citizens.

And yet, I've said I'll fight, and I stick by that. Perhaps it's wise to stop judging others, though: they have their own moral compasses, and you don't know their circumstances. 

It doesn't do anyone any good to get finger-waggy at long-termers in Taiwan as though it's assumed we'll all run. You don't know what life circumstances are guiding everyone's decisions.

Finally, when long-termers in Taiwan say they believe in international engagement (yes, including with some dodgy people), a strong defense and an understanding that the only way to win the CCP's "red line temper tantrum" games is not to play them, they are echoing the Taiwanese government line. 

I hope you believe that Taiwan can govern itself competently and has the intelligence on the Chinese government that it needs to make these kinds of decisions. So, when foreigners in Taiwan say that China is the aggressor, scoffs at diplomacy, and cannot be trusted, there's a reason for it. We've been living through what that attitude looks like.

We may not be echoing analysts in other countries who have some blinkered ideas about the power of diplomacy with a genocidal dictatorship, but we are echoing stance of the Tsai administration, and the majority of Taiwanese who do say they'll fight. This may not be a reliable indicator of who would actually be on the front lines, but it is a decent gauge of the extent to which Taiwanese people do not want to simply hand their country to China or compromise on their sovereignty.

With all this in mind, I've decided that I simply do not hear this any longer. You want to say I wouldn't fight for Taiwan? Or that any long-termer wouldn't, and thus forfeits the right to an opinion you don't like (but which happens to be in line with the Taiwanese government stance)? 

I think that's stupid, but I won't tell you what you can and can't say.

Yet I'm not interested in hearing it. I expect writing this won't stop people from holding silly opinions, but they're gonna 左耳進右耳出, and that's that. 

No, America isn't "provoking China" or "threatening war", so please cut the horseshit

Greetings from the northeasternmost part of the United States! I’ve been aggressively trying not to blog, and surprisingly, recent news regarding Taiwan has made that easy. I have little to say about the Laguna Woods shooting; it’s a pure tragedy and it feels base to analyze it. Regardless, the most important thing to note about it is the violence inherent in a “unificationist” agenda, which has already been covered quite well. COVID? Sick of it. 

But there is something I want to address in the wake of Biden’s affirmative words on Taiwan, which is the completely preposterous reaction. To be fair, I can see how any given American voter with no ties to Taiwan and a tenuous grasp on the issue might object. 

Certainly, if you see it as yet another military conflict far away that will drain your country’s resources, or are committed to an anti-war stance on principle, you’re likely to oppose such a move. I don’t agree with this stance per se — “They came for [people who are not me] and I said nothing, now who will stand up for me?” —  but I understand it.

There’s been another reactionary wave, however, which is as predictable as it is disappointing: accusing the US of provoking China, rather than naming China as the obvious provocateur.

I’ve seen this from bootlicking genocide denier and tankie clown Caitlin Johnstone, who baldly lied when she called Biden’s words “directly threatening a hot war with China”.

Everyone shit their guts out for weeks when Trump made some asinine tweets about North Korea but Biden repeatedly threatening direct hot war with China while waging a world-threatening proxy war against Russia is just fine normal stuff.

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) May 23, 2022

He was not. He was asked if the US was “willing to get involved military to defend Taiwan if it comes to that”, and he said “yes, that’s the commitment we made”.

That is to say, if China starts a war, if China provokes a conflict, if China threatens Taiwan, then the US would be “willing” to get involved, “if it comes to that”, which sounds like strong language but really just means they’re not ruling out a possible defense of Taiwan if China provokes them.

You may not agree with that stance, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not a provocation. It’s fleshing out a potential reaction to a provocation by China. He strengthened that stance with a recent speech at the Naval Academy, but again, did not actively commit the US to a war in defense of Taiwan.

But Johnstone is a Grade A Useful Idiot, and her opinions do not matter. Far more disappointing are the reactions of people who are not only more relevant, but who honestly should know better.

For instance, longtime Taiwan expert Bonnie Glaser had this to say:

“We could actually provoke a Chinese strike against Taiwan…rather than deterring the attack, which is, of course, what President Biden hopes to do.”

She also said that “it might well provoke the attack that we are trying to deter because Xi Jinping could conclude that China should act while it still has a conventional advantage. He might feel pushed into a corner by a U.S. direct challenge to Beijing’s claim to sovereignty over Taiwan.”

I normally hold anything Glaser has to say in high esteem, enough to generally give her the benefit of the doubt, understanding that she wants the best for Taiwan as we all do. Keeping in mind that, if anything, I’m biased in Glaser’s favor, her words above are a pile of absolute horseshit.

Yes, it sucks saying that about someone I generally respect. 

First, while it’s true that the web of agreements, acts, assurances and communiques that makes up the United States’ deliberately ambiguous commitments toward Taiwan do not directly obligate the US to defend Taiwan in the wake of a Chinese attack, that’s not quite what Biden said, is it?

The Taiwan Relations Act gives the United States the policy go-ahead to consider a strong defense of an invaded Taiwan — “to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”

That means we’re not specifically obligated to defend Taiwan, but we have the policy-backed ability to be willing to do so, if it comes to that. That’s what Biden was asked, and that’s what he said we committed to. A willingness, a possibility, a potentiality. That’s hardly a rock-hard promise of defense at all costs. It certainly is not, as Johnstone fibs, a direct threat of hot war. Perhaps the language was a bit stronger than expected, but it was not out of line.

Secondly, again, the US is not the provocateur here. I can imagine scenarios in which US meddling might cause Country A to declare war on Country B, but whether you consider past conflicts to fit that mold or not, it’s simply not the case regarding China’s threats against Taiwan.

I don’t know how much clearer this can be: China is the one threatening a war. China is the one bullying Taiwan. China is the one intentionally buzzing Taiwan’s ADIZ and attempting economic coercion and electoral chicanery. China is the one who wants to start that war. If a war broke out, China would be the one declaring it. That makes China the government doing the “provoking”, period.

Even if you think Biden’s words were “provocative” (they weren’t), China is hardly the victim in this story. We can all sympathize with the kid who gets teased one too many times and finally throws a punch, but China’s the one threatening Taiwan. The US is a bystander telling them to stop, not taunting them into beating up Taiwan.

Let’s go deeper: even if you think China is some sort of victim of a big mean United States here, we expect more than playground reactions from world leaders. Xi Jinping isn’t some kid in junior high, despite often acting like it. You don’t react to the president of a foreign country saying they object to your expansionist, subjugationist national agenda by attacking another country. You shouldn’t attack another country at all unless they’re attacking you, or you’re aiding an ally. For any reason. Even if you think it’s “your” territory.

That’s something a bad government chooses to do, not something they are “provoked” into doing. If they don't want to be the villain, all they have to do is not attack. To say otherwise is, again, horseshit.

It’s dangerous horseshit, too: what exactly is Biden supposed to say? Are we supposed to hem and haw and mince our words to appease dictators who have their hearts set on mass murder? Are we supposed to point fingers at ourselves and say we’re the bad guys, when the CCP is the one escalating tensions and acting provocatively?

Do those who agree with Glaser and (ugh) Johnstone think the US should continue to be wishy-washy about Taiwan? How has that done anything but cause China to ramp up their bullying and increase their military expenditure with an eye toward Taiwan’s future subjugation? Are we supposed to pretend that “not directly challenging” Beijing’s claim will cause them not to act on that claim, when they seem to grow more belligerent, not less, about acting?

Perhaps that’s it. Perhaps they believe that the CCP, less worried about the US’s reaction, will believe it can bide its time? If that’s the case, however, you’re just making the same mistake we’ve made for decades: handing China time to prepare for an invasion that they will absolutely undertake when they think they can win. You’re not deterring them, you’re giving them rope. Because again, they haven’t toned down the subjugationist tirades; they’ve ramped them up.

Glaser said one more thing that pissed me off:

Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund, said Taiwan’s government “focuses on the president’s declaration that he will defend Taiwan” [ed: he didn’t say that] “which they welcome because it provides reassurance to their public and boosts support for the ruling party. They ignore the rest.”

No, it does not merely boost support for the ruling party. It is the general consensus of the people of Taiwan that they do not wish to be annexed by China. Yes, there is a wide range of opinions and not all agree; that’s what it means to have a free society. But generally, it’s the most common belief and that’s not likely to change. In that way I suppose it provides reassurance, but that’s not just a political tool of the DPP — it’s the will of most Taiwanese.

As for “they ignore the rest” — the rest of what? That it could make China angry? Again, at what point does the assurance that 24 million or so Taiwanese will not be abandoned to a genocidal horror show of a government trump the desire to lick boots for a “peace” we cannot guarantee, because we wouldn’t be the ones starting the war? 

Let me be clear: even the best people can spout horseshit. This doesn't mean Glaser is a bad analyst or bad at her job. But on this point, she is wrong.

At what point do we realize that it’s China’s decision whether or not to invade, and regardless of what the US says, they could always choose not to start one? Are Taiwanese supposed to feel more reassured by the same old mealy-mouthed prevarication that has, for decades, emboldened China?

We know that the CCP is not above genocide and horrific political repression. They’ve proven that in East Turkestan and Hong Kong. We know that supporters of China’s plans for Taiwan are quite happy to “take the island, not the people” — a euphemism for the mass murder of anyone who resists Chinese rule. That is, most Taiwanese, as most do not consider themselves Chinese and do not want their country to be a part of China. We know those people are willing to act violently, frequently posting sick fantasies of outright massacre of Taiwanese.

Are we supposed to continue to give the bully more room to operate by refusing to say that we might step in if their harassment of Taiwan goes too far? Are we really so scared of Xi Jinping that our leaders cannot say one true thing: that China’s threats are unacceptable? Are we so beholden to cowardice that we truly cannot even speak, and any time we do it’s a “provocation”?

I genuinely struggle to understand how China always gets off so easy. Any other country treating Taiwan the way China does would be called what it is: a bad actor provoking tensions and threatening to start a war. We were the bad guys for invading Iraq. Russia is the bad guy for invading Ukraine. Hitler was the bad guy for invading everybody. European countries are the bad guys for their colonial histories.

And yet China is somehow a poor widdle baby victim who gets “provoked” by the Big Bad United States, even though they’re the ones invading Taiwan? How does that even work? Why do the normal rules for who provokes whom not apply?

I'm not the only one who thinks so, either:

Why is it acceptable in US Taiwan policy discourse for there to be such a thing as "provoking China." How did the CCP hypnotize experts with advanced degrees and decades of experience to plainly stipulate that China's actions aren't accountable to normal geopolitical physics?

— Pacific Standard 🚜🌻 (@PacStandardTW) May 25, 2022

It happens a lot, too. China commits a genocide, but the rest of the world are somehow stoking tensions for wanting to respond. Taiwan has an ADIZ and treats it like any other country who has one (including China!), but its very existence provokes China. China regularly issues bone-chilling threats regarding its intentions toward Taiwan, and yet we're all the bad guys for countering them because talking back “raises tensions?

It's all such fucking horseshit, and I am sad to see douchelord tankies and respected intellectuals alike fall for it, and even repeat it.

It is not a provocation to say that China’s constant bullying of Taiwan is unacceptable, and if it ends in China starting a war, the US might be willing to step in, or to point out that we do have the policy go-ahead to do so if we choose. The bullying, by China, is the provocation.

Again, the US is not the source of provocations here. China is.