China Taiwan Conflict Quotes

The Belt and Road is global in nature. Its ruling principle is interdependence, a close network of common interests by which every country’s development is affected by the development path in other countries. In his Jakarta speech, Xi called it a “community of shared destiny.” The expression featured in Chinese official pronouncements since at least 2007, when it was used to describe relations between Taiwan and the Mainland. Applied to relations outside China’s borders, it was a reformulation—a modern version—of the traditional concept of Tianxia (天下), which scholars such as Zhao Tingyang had been popularizing with extraordinary success. Zhao argued that the most important fact about the world today is that it has not become a zone of political unity, but remains a Hobbesian stage of chaos, conflict, noncooperation and anarchy.16 Looking for a way to frame new political concepts distinct from Western ideas of world order, the Chinese authorities quickly appropriated Tianxia—a notion that originated about three thousand years ago—and made it the cornerstone of their most ambitious geopolitical initiative. The idea of a community of shared destiny and the Belt and Road develop the two sides of every human action. Both have their own emphasis: the former belongs to the idea, the concept or type, the latter is aimed at practice. Together they form the “dialectical unity of theory and practice, goals and paths, value rationality and instrumental rationality.”17

If there is any one country the United States is likely to engage in military conflict with over the next several decades, it certainly is a rapidly militarizing China. And if you were an American business executive contemplating an offshoring decision, would you really want all of your company’s eggs in the China basket when such a conflict arises over Taiwan or Tibet or territorial rights in the South China Seas or access to oil in the Middle East?

If Taiwan and the rest of the democratic world can work together thus well, it lends credence to the idea that predictions of globalism’s demise are greatly overblown. The fight between authoritarianism and democracy is depicted in “Chip War” as being fought with booming weapons fueled by silicon chips. The book makes this point quite clear. China’s high-stakes conflict with the West, the global economy, and technology have brought Taiwan to an intriguing juncture. This conflict is now playing out in modern-day Taiwan.

As we shall see in the later chapters, Chinese actions in the Taiwan Strait Crises of 1954–58, the Indian border clash of 1962, the conflict with the Soviets along the Ussuri River in 1969–71, and the Sino-Vietnam War of 1979 all had the common feature of a sudden blow followed quickly by a political phase. Having restored the psychological equation, in Chinese eyes, genuine deterrence has been achieved.37 When the Chinese view of preemption encounters the Western concept of deterrence, a vicious circle can result: acts conceived as defensive in China may be treated as aggressive by the outside world; deterrent moves by the West may be interpreted in China as encirclement. The United States and China wrestled with this dilemma repeatedly during the Cold War; to some extent they have not yet found a way to transcend it. Conventional wisdom has ascribed the Chinese decision to enter the Korean War to the American decision to cross the 38th parallel in early October 1950 and the advance of U.N. forces to the Yalu River, the Chinese-Korean border. Another theory was innate Communist

The greatest risk of military war is when both parties have 1) military powers that are roughly comparable and 2) irreconcilable and existential differences. As of this writing, the most potentially explosive conflict is that between the United States and China over Taiwan.