Opinion | Machismo has no place in relations between mighty China and tiny, isolated Taiwan

Paranoia about a rising China is unwarranted. Yet Beijing should also check its impulse to press its advantage over the self-ruled island

Neither side wants war, and many Taiwanese just want to keep the status quo

Reading Time:3 minutes

Published: 3:00am, 16 Jul 2019Updated: 5:33am, 16 Jul 2019

Taiwan, with a population nearly that of Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway together, doesn’t deserve to have to prepare for a defensive war against the People’s Republic of China – population four times the United States’.

The Chinese leadership should hardly have to effect Taiwan’s integration into the mainland polity through violence; instead it might resolve to keep a cool head and prevent macho nationalism from getting out of hand or military muscle to shadow the Taiwan Strait so darkly, even as China’s rise continues apace.

Hasn’t Beijing more or less already won – or, at least, gained an insurmountable edge? Strikingly few nations recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state (all credit to Beijing’s dollar diplomacy); the variegated 193 member states of the United Nations include tiny islands like Tuvalu and Nauru, but not Taiwan.

Even so, Taiwan garners respect here and there around the world, especially from non-state actors, which is more or less how the People’s Republic feels it must treat it: as a wayward piece of non-state.

Enter gigantic US research and development non-profit RAND, which once had a hawkish image burnished by the US military-industrial complex during the cold war, and whose founders included iconic Air Force general Curtis (“Bomb them back into the Stone Age”) LeMay. RAND has long since expanded into domestic and foreign policy research, and has some of the best policy analysts anywhere.

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