Along the Way: Hiram College speaker says invasion of Taiwan may follow war over Ukraine
Will an invasion of Taiwan by the Peoples Republic of China follow the horror of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
Johnson Chiang, a speaker at the recent Garfield Institute symposium at Hiram College, warned war may be coming and urged the United States to prepare for it, if it wants Taiwan, a democratically self-governing island 100 miles off the coast of China, to remain independent.
Approximately one third the size of Ohio and home to 23 million, mostly Han Chinese, Taiwan was once a province of old imperial China, which ceded it to Japan in 1898. Since World War II, Taiwan has functioned independently, but was claimed to be part of mainland China by the two factions that fought to rule China, the Communist Party led by Mao Zedong emerging victorious in 1949.
Protected since 1949 by the American Seventh Fleet, Taiwan was led by China’s defeated faction, Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Party. However, having grown prosperous in the years since 1949 due to hard work, good planning, and free enterprise, Taiwan in the 1990s transitioned into a functioning democracy in which voters have real choices when they go to the polls.
Johnson Chiang, the Hiram speaker who warned of coming efforts by China to annex Taiwan, is director general of Taipei’s Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Chicago. In actuality, the office functions like a consulate, a fiction necessitated by the USA having diplomatic relations with the Peoples Republic of China, which insists Taiwan is not an independent country with ambassadorial rights, but part of China.
China, the world’s manufacturing hub, is nearly the size of continental USA. It has the world’s largest population at 1.3 billion people, the world’s second largest economy, and a military that is one of the world’s largest and most modern. Without U.S. support, China’s invasion of Taiwan, experts say, might result in a Chinese victory within days or weeks. Positioned between China and Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait, America’s Seventh Fleet stands in China’s way, but Johnson Chiang said that may not be enough.
He applauded the recent formation of the Quad Four, a loose alliance of the United States, Australia, Japan and India, calling it a start in trying to rebalance the growing power of China in the Pacific. However, he said the effectiveness of the alliance is tempered by the fact that the USA, Japan and even South Korea, a potential new addition to the Quad Four, do more business with China than almost any other nation in the world.
The USA under President Obama became cautious about world leadership and then under President Trump advocated isolationist policies. China interpreted that as an opportunity to grow its world leadership role. Chiang said China’s Belt and Road strategy of commercially linking China up with the nations of Southeast and South Asia, the nations of the Middle East and Africa, and even European nations, challenges an America perceived by some as in retreat and in decline.
Wealthy Taiwan is currently the dominant world player in semi-conductor manufacturing. Strategically located, Taiwan is an island gateway into the South China Sea, an offshoot of the Pacific Ocean, which extends hundreds of miles south and provides easy access to the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. China, Chiang said, is creating military outposts throughout the South China Sea on small islands artificially grown to cater to China’s navy and air force. Whereas these smaller nations have been trading partners and clients for the United States, they are gradually being drawn into China’s sphere of influence, according to Chiang.
China’s success as a centrally controlled nation in which the Communist Party is paramount poses a major challenge to America’s example of democracy and its continuing world leadership role, Chiang said. He warned that China’s ambitions for Taiwan provide one stage where this contest will eventually be played out.
In the meantime, China’s leadership is carefully watching America’s and NATO’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as it hopes to convert Taiwan from a self-governing island into another Chinese province, forcibly if need be, Chiang said. Travel issues forced him to speak via a televised hookup.
David E. Dix is a former publisher of the Record-Courier.
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Hiram College speaker: Invasion of Taiwan may follow war over Ukraine
