The year 2025 came to a close with another massive show of force against Taiwan by its aggressive and combative neighbour, China. Acting under the orders of its megalomaniac president for life, Xi Jinping, PLA forces (army, navy and air force) demonstrated their strength to an embattled island nation of 23 million people which has endured years of harassment at the hands of their Communist antagonist across the Taiwan Strait.
The Taiwan Strait is an international seaway, not under the control of Communist China, as much as Xi Jinping would like it to be. This ideologically motivated leader who sees himself as the rightful successor to Mao Zedong believes it his destiny to reclaim Taiwan (and the Taiwan Strait by extension) for the Chinese nation, even though it has never been ruled by Communist China at any time.
China's claim to Taiwan is based on falsehood from beginning to end. Taiwan was never a Chinese country, as much as Xi Jinping proclaims it to have been one. Its original and lawful inhabitants were all Polynesian people, whose descendants are widely believed to have migrated to New Zealand centuries ago. Settlers of Chinese origin did not start arriving in Taiwan from Fujian Province until the 1600s, and at their peak only inhabited a sparse one third of the island.
These Fujianese settlers did not migrate to Taiwan at the behest of the Emperor of China; they moved across the sea to make a better life for themselves and to seek freedom from Imperial Chinese control. At the time of the Japanese takeover in 1895, the island had been under official Chinese suzerainty for little more than eight years.
At the conclusion of WW2 in 1945, the victorious allied powers awarded Taiwan to the Republic of China (Nationalist) government led by Chiang Kai-shek. The island of Taiwan is still known by its official title of Republic of China to this day and there has been no move to change it since. It is a sovereign, independent, self-governing and separate nation over which Communist China holds no authority whatsoever. It also has a democratically elected president and parliament - unlike its bellicose neighbour to the north.
Present Threats
Taiwan has been a victim of Chinese so-called gray-zone tactics for the past several years now with ferocious cyberattacks (one million per day), propaganda campaigns and the planting of false stories in the press and the media about the nation's people and personalities. This is in addition to constant incursions into the nation's Air Defence Identification Zones (ADIZ) by the PLA Air Force, aggressive tactics on the open seas and non-stop espionage actions against Taiwan's military by the Chinese intelligence services. All these actions are part of China's asymmetric warfare plan to wear down, and ultimately, win over Taiwan's government and people without a shot being fired.
All the signs are that these tactics are not working, hence the increasingly bellicose utterances from President Xi Jinping regarding the inevitability of Communist Chinese victory over the island. The United States has clearly seen the danger signs and has reacted accordingly by authorising increased arms sales to Taiwan under the authority of the Taiwan Relations Act and establishing a military training team on the island numbering up to 500 personnel. The government of Taiwan has thus been able to order the latest version of the F-16 fighter jet for their air force, purchased HIMARS air-defence systems, brand-new Abrams tanks and up-to- date self-propelled guns to bolster the island's defences.
Any invasion of Taiwan will be extremely difficult to accomplish, given the mountainous nature of the country and the lack of suitable beaches to land a Chinese invasion force. The present US/Taiwanese strategy currently relies on prevention and deterrence, and there can be no doubt the Americans have a well-developed plan they can put into effect if China does indeed attack the island. The same goes for Japan which has an offshore island (Iwakuni) only 60 miles from Taiwan which has been heavily armed by their government in anticipation of hostilities breaking out. Many people, including the prime minister of Japan, believe their country, which is a strong but unofficial ally of the island, will inevitably be drawn into a China-Taiwan conflict and are preparing themselves for a war in the South China Sea area accordingly.
What Will The West Do?
The biggest mistake the western democracies can make is to standby and let things unfold, giving China a free hand to do as it likes in the South China Sea without political and other practical support for Taiwan, which is a pro-western, fully democratic nation that poses no danger to anyone. Given the fact that a quarter of all world trade passes through the South China Sea and 70% of all Japan's energy supplies traverse it, the potential for armed conflict is already there. Chinese bluster that their aggression towards Taiwan is a domestic issue and of no concern to outside parties - is yet another ploy to warn off western support for a democratic nation under threat. It is to be hoped the West will come to the realisation that the island of Taiwan is a defensive bastion guarding the First Island Chain and that it must be protected from attack. If Taiwan is allowed to fall, all American credibility in Asia will be lost and the democratic nations of the world will have good reason to lament this.
The well known expression, freedom is not free, is now being put to the test over Taiwan. It is a cause worth defending, given the alternative of an armed and aggressive China controlling the Taiwan Strait and the open seas beyond it towards Japan. The only language Communist China understands is the language of force, and only strong tactics backed up by military might will prevent China from taking mastery of the whole South China Sea, a thought the free nations of the world must surely deplore.
