We had an air-raid drill this afternoon. First our phones shrieked a warning and then sirens wailed outside. For the next half hour everyone had to remain indoors. Outside the city, earlier in the day, military aircraft had practiced landing and taking off on Provincial Highway No 1.
Why the need for air-raid drills?
The simple answer is because there could be an air-raid. Bombers might attack Taiwan at any time and landing-craft could appear on the island’s beaches. Military aircraft come close to the island almost every week right now, and battleships and aircraft carriers from several nations patrol the waters nearby.
Taiwan, for decades a pawn on the geopolitical chessboard, has become something more like a bishop or a knight, a more strategically important piece in the game.
Superficially, all this military activity is because there is a dispute between China and Taiwan over who controls the island. China sees Taiwan as a wayward province which needs to be brought back into the fold. Taiwan (mostly and increasingly) sees itself as an independent state.
In practice, there’s a lot more at stake.
Outside Taiwan and China, most of the rest of the world accepts the so-called “One-China Policy”, at least officially. This says that there is only one sovereign state called China, even though there currently appears to be two: the People’s Republic of China, and the Republic of China, which is another name for Taiwan. But this policy is only ‘acknowledged’ by some other states, notably the US, and that does not necessarily mean that it is ‘recognised’.
Words matter a lot here, and interpretations vary.
A small number of nations are directly aligned with Taiwan, and see the island as the legitimate government of all China.
Taiwan itself semi-officially adheres to something called the 1992 Consensus, though the existence of this agreement is also disputed. The 1992 Consensus says that both Taiwan and China agree there is only one China but that both sides accept that their understanding of what this means differs.
The reality is more complex
In reality, very little in this situation is black and white, except perhaps in China. For almost everyone else the situation is grey, and it seems to be getting ever greyer. Its roots go back to 1949, and the end of the Chinese civil war, though they are also bound to what happened, or didn’t happen, depending on your perspective, in the previous 350 years.
For years, this unusual stand-off has been relatively stable. Over the last few decades however, views appear to have shifted a bit, at least from the perspective of many people in Taiwan, but also in parts of the international community. China would probably say that its own position has not changed at all.
One change has been the rise of an independence movement in Taiwan, and a desire to be internationally recognised after so many decades in the shadows. Taiwan is unable to participate in international organisations, such as the UN and WHO, despite having much to contribute.
This push for independence has found support, often unofficially, in many other places. It has perhaps helped that many countries are in some sort of dispute with China, over trade, intellectual property and a variety of other issues.
Taiwan has also become more important to the rest of the world. First, other nations have become more aware of the strategic value of the island, militarily. Second, Taiwan is home to some of the world’s most essential companies, especially in the IT sector. The island is a centre of high-tech manufacturing on a vast scale, with cutting edge engineering excellence.
All this suggests that a long-unresolved situation has become a little less stable. China is upset that an island it sees as an inalienable part of its territory risks slipping from its grasp, while much of the rest of the world, as well as Taiwan itself, appears to be encouraging the drift.
Yet this does not mean that China is likely to invade Taiwan any time soon.
