Taiwan (2): dangerous changes in the status quo, will they lead to war?
Channel: Harald in China
Date: 2022-05-22

The US state department has changed its description of the US-Taiwan relations. It now talks about values and how wonderful a democracy Taiwan is, stopping just short of calling Taiwan a country: https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-taiwan/

Why this is controversial: until last week the same website explained that the US switched recognition from Taipei (capital of the "Republic of China" on Taiwan) to Beijing, making clear Beijing represents the same country that the government on Taiwan used to represent. Moreover, it used to state explicitly, that the US doesn't support Taiwan independence. This promise has now disappeared. See here what the website used to look like before the latest change: https://web.archive.org/web/20210512080858/https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-taiwan/

The US knows fully well that these kind of actions are perceived by China as a dangerous play with fire. They know, because the Chinese have repeatedly told the US: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202111/1239146.shtml

China has also repeatedly made clear, that they strongly prefer a peaceful reunification over a military one, but that they would go to war over Taiwan if the red line was crossed: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1176466.shtml

As the US has been working for decades with pro-independence forces on Taiwan (https://www.ned.org/taiwan-foundation-for-democracy-taipei/), the question is why the empty promise was now removed. I can only understand it as active, purposeful provocation.

The next question is, what such provocation would bring. I know the theory that a war over Taiwan, if losses for the PRC were high, could lead to a destabilization of China and the fall of the Communist Party of China CPC. And then what? Worst case is civil war with hundreds of millions of people dead or fleeing, making all prior refugee crises pale by comparison. A best case would be a dissolution of the political system like the USSR collapse. But even that collapse brought massive destruction of capital and production capacity: https://www.thewire.in/article/economy/post-soviet-russian-economic-collapse/amp . Given the West already faces stagflation due to high prices an insufficient capacity, disruption in China could also well destabilize the West. So what are they hoping for?

The US claims to care about the interest of the people on Taiwan. If that's the case, why not look at what those people do? Taiwan has very low military spending, less than the agreed NATO limit of at least 2% of GDP: https://www.knoema.com/atlas/Taiwan-Province-of-China/Military-expenditure-as-a-share-of-GDP%3fmode=amp evidently Taiwanese don't want war over Taiwan. So why would the US try to change the status quo and provoke the possibility of war?