Following U.S. representative Michael McCaul’s visit with the Taiwanese president last week, China has placed sanctions on the lawmaker for “sending a seriously wrong signal to Taiwanese independence separatist forces” as well as “seriously harming China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The sanctions state that McCaul wont be permitted back into China, from interacting with organizations or individuals within China, and his monetary assets in China will be frozen. China states that Taiwan is the single most important and sensitive issue when dealing with the United States.
It will be interesting to see what happens to Taiwan within the next decade; China is acting similar to how Russia was acting prior to the Ukraine War, but even more sensitive. China has been incredibly careful when dealing with the issue of Taiwan, much of the West has claimed that there will be intense pushback if China invades; China cannot risk the economic crisis that Russia is facing currently. Their markets heavily rely on exports, sanctions being placed on their trade would ruin their economy, causing populations across China to rapidly descend into poverty and starvation. Currently, China’s only other option to invading Taiwan is to increase animosity towards anyone that recognizes Taiwan as a state.
It is a slight comfort to know that China can learn from what went wrong in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and possibly feel daunted by the possibility of gargantuan sanctions and crashing economies. The war in Ukraine massively broke international norms, but the ICC’s arrest warrants for Putin show (no matter how useless) that the international community will not accept these sort of things.