Taiwan: Thriving or Just Barely Surviving?

In an early November election, incumbent Daniel Ortega retained the presidency of Nicaragua. Seen largely as a dictator, his autocratic continuation in the past election saw the house arrest and jailing of 7 opposition presidential candidates among various other attempts to crackdown on dissent, including the barring of foreign journalists from entering Nicaragua. Just a month after the election, on December 9th, Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, announced that it would be revoking its ties with Taiwan and officially recognizing Beijing, China as the sole authority of the island. The decision held significant implications in the political battlefield of East Asia since Nicaragua’s withdrawal leaves Taiwan with now only 14 allies, mostly consisting of small Pacific and Caribbean states along with the United States.

         With this new development in Taiwan’s international presence, it unfortunately, may only be a matter of months before the free democracy that has long resisted China’s power politics falls to its knees to Beijing’s authority. First among the many concerns facing Taiwan’s future is the fact that its international support framework is trending in a negative direction. For example, Nicaragua’s change in stance is emblematic of China’s newfound diplomatic initiative involving the financial backing of small, authoritarian regimes. Similar to their heavily predatorily contracted infrastructure projects as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, China has sustained monetary flows into vulnerable states with equally vulnerable legitimacy in order to gain their diplomatic favor, which has been largely successful in combating US diplomacy since the US has alternatively been unable to pledge resources towards winning over these aforementioned regimes as a result of their authoritarian nature that contradicts American interests abroad. Another example of Taiwan’s sinking international support framework is the US’s recent adoption of the “strategic ambiguity” policy, whereby American leaders and diplomats vaguely indicate their support of Taipei as the seat of power in Taiwan without outrightly committing to how they would respond in the case of a Chinese invasion. US-Taiwan relations have existed since the 1970s and underwent significant development in 1979 when the Carter administration pulled out of the US-ROC mutual defense treaty that mandated US intervention on behalf of Taiwan if it were ever attacked, which was replaced by the Taiwan Relations Act that same year. The TRA in contrast to the US-ROC mutual defense treaty never set in stone a particular US response to the invasion of Taiwan but rather pledged to establish other diplomatic ties and institutions that would presumably serve as a replacement for the treaty, including “extensive, close, and friendly commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan,” the providing of “arms of a defensive character,” as well as a statement that nothing in the act “may be construed as a basis for supporting the exclusion or expulsion of Taiwan from continued membership in any international financial institution or any other international organization.”

In recent years, countries such as the United States have enhanced their ambiguity of support for Taiwan, signaling to China the ongoing erosion of Taiwan-backing forces, which has, in turn, encouraged China to assert its dominance over the small island. For example, The Global Times newspaper, the state-backed media corporation in China, has begun a propaganda campaign of bolstering tensions between the US and China in terms of Taiwan and of reiterating China’s lawful claim over Taiwan. Complimenting this media push, China has accelerated its incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) by deploying six J-16 fighters, two J-10 fighters, two H-6 bombers, one Y-8 spy plane, one Y-8 anti-submarine plane, and one KJ-500 spy plan all in the same day. These acts of aggression have prompted Taipei to declare that it is being harassed by China.

However, despite its failing diplomatic claim for support, Taiwan’s free market is keeping the island’s international relevance and importance afloat. The US’s Assistant Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner in a statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on December 8th asserted that “bolstering Taiwan’s self-defense” is vital because of how “integral” Taiwan’s free market is to the global economy. In particular, Ratner acknowledged Taiwan as a “critical supplier of high-technology, including semiconductors.” Taiwan is home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which is not only the largest semiconductor producer in the world but also single-handedly accounts for over 50% of the global made-to-order chips supply in the industry. TSMC chairman Mark Liu reinforced Taiwan’s high-technology industries as valuable in an earnings call by explaining that any threat to Taiwan’s self-governance would ultimately cause significant disruptions to the global semiconductor supply chain, which is in the interest of no one. As mentioned earlier, the attractiveness of Taiwan’s economic importance in the global market has amounted to tangible diplomatic victories. Despite China’s growing military activities in Taiwan’s airspace, Taipei successfully coordinated the Technology Trade and Investment Collaboration framework with Washington DC after a December 6th call between Taiwanese Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-Hua and US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, which outlined both states’ intentions to further economic ties by protecting critical supply chains, with semiconductors as the presumably main objective. Moreover, Taiwan’s economic presence on the global stage has featured vast foreign infrastructure development initiatives, which have similarly come back to Taiwan’s benefit in its struggle against China. For example, Taiwan has spear-headed a number of agricultural infrastructure projects in Paraguay and has additionally generously donated medical supplies to Paraguay during the COVID-19 pandemic, including one million vaccination doses this past June. In response, immediately following Nicaragua’s announcement that it would recognize China as the rightful governance of Taiwan’s territory, Mario Abdo, Paraguay’s top adviser to the country’s president, announced that Paraguay would respect Nicaragua’s decision but is nonetheless firmly in support of the Taiwanese government. US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland publicly stated that the Taiwan-Paraguay relationship should act as a strong example for the rest of the world.

Overall, there have been both positive and negative developments to the Taiwanese journey towards self-governance free of harassment and encroachments from foreign powers, though as of the moment the negative ones appear more threatening than the positive ones appear consoling. Taiwan has long stood its ground as a beacon of the free market, individual liberties, and liberal democracy in a region plagued with authoritarianism and Chinese interventionism. Only time will tell whether the small island nation fighting one of the biggest fights in modern diplomacy will emerge victoriously or will drown in obscurity under Chinese rule.

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