Article Link: https://apnews.com/article/china-taiwan-security-fb074d932801e5c6d2a3b77b2ac5e88e
China has continuously threatened Taiwan with reunification with the mainland, if needed China has threatened to invade the island using force. The passage through the Taiwan Strait is also crucial and the US has said it’s a top priority. The United States has been drawn into this as the US says it has “rock solid” ties with the island to keep it from being under pressure and for the island to be able to defend itself from China. The United States has been selling billions of dollars worth of military equipment to Taiwan. F-16 and Abram tanks and more have been sold to Taiwan in order for them to protect themselves from China. Taiwan has ramped up production of land mines and ground to air missiles in the recent months.
With the tensions going in Taiwan and the Taiwan strait the long last impacts could be very extreme in the future. If Taiwan is invaded by China another democratic country falls to communism, that could be very dangerous and costly as the Taiwan strait allows billions of dollars worth of cargo to pass each year. This would affect not only the US consumer goods but other nations too. I think the US keeping strong ties with Taiwan is good because it allows us to keep an ally close to the Mainland and many computer chips come from Taiwan which is very important.
Both countries could respond in many different ways as they could either go to war and fight it out and one country will fall and be incorporated into the other country. The other solution would be for the countries to come to an agreement. Either Taiwan keeps it’s sovereignty and it becomes a nation state or China takes Taiwan for it’s own. The other possibility would be SAR (Special Administrative Region), like Hong Kong and Macau Taiwan could give up it’s foreign policy making in order to gain peace from China and solve this resolution. Many of these are unlikely given the current circumstances of the terrible relations between these two countries.
The continued threats from China incorporate what we are currently learning very well as if this tension get’s the US involved into a war. NATO, an Military IGO (Inter–governmental Organizations) would have to come and get involved to fight alongside the US and Taiwan. Taiwan is also currently a non-recognized nation which means that Taiwan isn’t recognized as an independent country by the United Nations which is something we also learned. The reason why Taiwan hasn’t gained independence is due partly to the people not wanting to be independent but also, China. China is apart of the nations that invite a nation in the UN to be recognized as a nation.