Link to the article: https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20211009-china-s-president-xi-vows-peaceful-reunification-with-taiwan
China’s president Xi sees the independence of Taiwan as the greatest danger to China’s national reunification and revival. In efforts to unify the two states, he announced at a commemoration for the 110th anniversary of Xinhai Revolution in Beijing that there would be a “peaceful” reunification, taking a gentler approach than his last debriefing regarding Taiwan where he pledged to “smash” any attempts that Taiwan made at concrete independence. Despite this promise of peace, China has increased their military presence around Taiwan with four days of air incursions involving 150 aircraft including 38 warplanes some with nuclear-capabilities. Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen states that Taiwan does not want military confrontation but is willing to do whatever it takes to protect their liberty, freedom, and independence.
As Taiwan will continue to defend their own freedom and way of life China will continue to push back onto the independence that they have. Due to the freshness of Taiwan’s separation and the nature of this conflict, it will cause problems internally in both states as well as on the global scale. Globally in the sense that Taiwan is allied with many of the world’s most powerful and influential countries (except China of course) like the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. And, as China is already seen as a threat to these countries, the conflict between Taiwan and China could exacerbate the relationships even more depending on the levels that China is willing to go to to reunite Taiwan with China.
Taiwan is an unrecognized state, meaning that they have most of the qualifications to become a sovereign state, but are not recognized by all five members of the security council. As China’s economy helps support many countries around the world, it is often not recognized in order to not upset China. One of the main reasons for Taiwan becoming separate from China is to escape the authoritarian regime that controls China and become a democratic state. As this issue continues to unfold, the rest of the world’s view on Taiwan’s sovereignty and independence could change along with relationships between major global powers.