Taiwan, like the Philippines, fits the classic pattern of a country in which the US backed a military dictatorship during decades of martial law in the midst of the Cold War. Taiwan would still have US bases, too, if not for the severance of diplomatic relations between the US and Taiwan in 1979.

Today, Taiwan projects itself as a progressive democracy. The current ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), originally emerged from Taiwan’s democracy movement. The DPP and pro-democracy movement as a whole contended for decades with the US-backed Kuomintang or KMT. Despite this, the US remains Taiwan’s security guarantor from the threat of a Chinese invasion in the present era of DPP governance. Despite their differences, the DPP, the US and the people of Taiwan share an alignment of interest—that of keeping Taiwan free from Chinese control.

Chinese threats directed at Taiwan have increased since the 2022 Pelosi visit to Taiwan, which stands to be a victim of rising militarism between the US and China. And though the US claims that its interest in defending Taiwan is due to its defense of democracies worldwide, the many years in which America backed the KMT’s military dictatorship are proof to the contrary. The people of Taiwan want to defend Taiwan democratically; the US is definitely open to other possibilities.

Still, it would be a mistake to think that if the US backed off, China would leave Taiwan alone. China has its own reasons for desiring Taiwan.

To be sure, China asserts that Taiwan has always been part of its territory since time immemorial. But Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China, which was founded in 1949. Before it fell to KMT control—often viewed as a form of settler colonialism by those who did not come to Taiwan with the KMT—Taiwan experienced fifty years of Japanese colonialism from 1895 to 1945.

The Chinese Communist Party itself under Mao Zedong did not claim Taiwan until the KMT came to Taiwan, having previously taken the view that Taiwan should be an independent country similar to Korea. And, in premodern times, Taiwan’s relation to Chinese imperial dynasties was tenuous. Taiwan was only ever a province of China for seven years under the Qing, who did not control all of the island.

With a 2% indigenous population and 88% of the population from prior waves of Han migration, and Taiwan having seen colonialism from Japan, the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese in the past four hundred years, it would be historical erasure to think that Taiwan has always been part of China. Taiwan has struggled for self-determination even when it has historically been used as a geopolitical pawn of empires for centuries.

While there is a popular view that China wants Taiwan because of its dominance in the semiconductor industry, producing around 90% of advanced chips, this is not the case. Nor is it only because of nationalism that China desires Taiwan. 

Whether the Japanese before them, premodern Chinese dynasties as the Qing or Ming, regional powers have always desired Taiwan because of its geographic location at a critical juncture of maritime power projection. Given such historical precedent, China would likely desire Taiwan even without any US presence in the region. And yet, this, too, is why the US is invested in Taiwan’s defense.

Over and beyond the interests of the US and China, the Taiwanese people have an interest in, and right to, national self-determination and sovereignty. Caught in the machination of larger powers, the Taiwanese people simply seek to chart their own course. Yet to do this will require help from others in the region.

It is true that a crisis in the Taiwan Strait could potentially draw the Philippines and other countries in the region into conflict. However, it is necessary to build alternative narratives to those of warmongers.

In particular, while anti-militarists and peacebuilders have long resisted conflict, it is important to educate ourselves about how a “Taiwan contingency” would take place. Otherwise, we put ourselves at risk of basing our understanding of conflict from hawks. 

History shows us that policies of appeasement by sacrificing smaller polities to larger ones do not, in fact, placate expansionist powers. Sacrificing Taiwan to China in the belief that this would cement regional peace would, in fact, very likely mean that the Philippines would be next on the chopping block. This shows that nations’ right to self-determination and sovereignty are indivisible: sacrificing one country poses a threat to all countries.

Yet it is important to know that China could not take Taiwan today. An invasion of Taiwan would be on the scale of D-Day in World War II. Within just a mere few weeks of fighting, China would see tens of thousands of casualties. All this would take place even before any hypothetical US involvement, merely from the resistance of the Taiwanese military.

To this extent, the Chinese—and world—economy would likely see a full-on crisis after such a military conflict. It is a question whether the Chinese government’s leadership could survive the damage to their political legitimacy after such loss of life and in the wake of the economic cataclysm that would follow. There are yet ways, then, to maintain regional peace short of shooting war, without needing to demand sacrifices.

To avoid a deadly showdown between the two superpowers that embroils the region in conflict, it requires the peoples of the region uniting against shared aggressors—from Jeju Island, to Okinawa, to Taiwan, and the Philippines. But it requires regional solidarity, which understands that the region is caught in the dynamics of both US and Chinese imperialism, and critically interrogates the militarist claims of all sides—which stands against warmongers and can call out when imperial powers are, in fact, paper tigers.

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