Opinion | It's the US living dangerously over Taiwan, not China
By Tom Fowdy
On Monday whilst visiting Taiwan, US President Joe Biden made it known that America would "defend" the island in a conflict contingency. Although officially walked back by the Whitehouse spokesperson later, the comments are not the first he has made of this nature, and were certainly not accidental. They add to an accumulating body of evidence that suggests that the United States have effectively "moved the goalposts" in respect to Taiwan, whilst nonetheless claiming misleadingly that they are adhering to the same policy they have always upheld.
This coincides with State Department Spokesperson Ned Price saying on Twitter that the US does not and has never accepted the "One China Policy" but only "acknowledges it", the recent change to the State Department Website which removed references to the One China Policy and the unwillingness of the US to now state it in official readouts of communications with China. Across the board, the United States is walking back from its diplomatic commitments with Beijing and is "moving the goalposts" on Taiwan.
Yet despite this, Biden also claimed that it was China who is "flirting with danger" over the island, and not the United States in its subtle change of position. Emboldened by the crisis in Ukraine, America has strategically calculated that Beijing has a lot to lose from a potential conflict over Taiwan, in terms of both sanctions and also as seen with Ukraine, the willingness of western states to commit military resources, intelligence sharing and weaponry to the defenders. Whether the US would directly involve itself in its unseen, but its participation as a backer is unquestionable.
Nonetheless, the White House now feels it can get away with "moving the goalposts" further and not elicit a response from Beijing owing to these enormous risks. In such an event, the US would move quickly in order to leverage its strategic advantages over China in an attempt to try and crush its military and technology production. This would involve, as it was applied to Russia, an immediate weaponization of the entire semiconductor industry to block exports to China itself. There have been clear moves to orchestrate such a scenario, with the United States consolidating its control over the industry by strongarming companies such as TSMC to build capacity in politically friendly countries. This has included a plant in Arizona, one in Japan, and proposed plants in both Singapore and Germany. In conjunction with this, the US has leveraged every effort possible to try and block China's own advances and access to high-end semiconductors.
Indeed, China has many reasons to think twice about starting such a catastrophic conflict, and western commentary is correct to the point that Russia's effort in Ukraine doesn't set a favorable example. However, this does not mean Beijing will simply do nothing. First of all, China's leverage over Taiwan is considerably stronger than Russia's via Ukraine. The latter is an internationally recognized and formally independent sovereign state. Taiwan on the other hand, is widely internationally recognized as part of China.
China's position as a result has far more support internationally than Russia's over Ukraine, and would not experience the same level of international condemnation or isolation in such a scenario. Likewise, China's level of importance in the global economy as the world's second-largest, its significance in global trade, supply chains and finance, as well as its deep integration into many bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements, also make the same level of sanctions applied to Russia near impossible, not least for the fact if tried they would cause catastrophic damage to the global economy. For example, a US effort to try and freeze China's foreign currency reserves (the largest holder of US government debt) would inflict a global financial meltdown.
So, whilst the United States may feel confident to push against China's redlines, this policy "reinterpretation" is in fact a growing sense of hubris that gravely underestimates China, a country which across the board is far more powerful militarily, economically and politically, than the Russian federation. This also means that China naturally has serious leverage to exert its position over Taiwan without the need to resort to military means, and is likely to sharpen these approaches prudently. For example, the scale of sanctions applied to Lithuania over opening a "Taiwan representative office" is one such example of this. Not only has these sanctions cost thousands of jobs in the Baltic state, but they have also pushed inflation (combined with the Russia and Belarus conflicts) up to a record annual high of 18%.
Nonetheless, this obvious shift in position by the US marks an increasingly dangerous and increasingly uncertain world. It is America who, in forfeiting their longstanding commitment to the One China Policy, that is willingly and eagerly "living dangerously" in the Taiwan strait, believing that it now is in their national interests in the bid to try and isolate China by stepping on the road towards a potential conflict. But Beijing is not Moscow, for many, many reasons, and there is no guarantee this escalation of tensions will end in Washington's favor. President Xi Jinping has attached the highest possible stakes to the goal of reunification. He has made it clear that he would prefer to do so peacefully, but he isn't about to accept failure.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
Opinion | The US 'Indo-Pacific' Framework will fail: Here's why
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