When I was a child in Taiwan, my mother introduced me to the art of xiangsheng or traditional Chinese stand-up comedy. In a 1991 show titled Strange Tales of Taiwan , the famed performer Lee Li-chun described Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s. “In that era, everything was temporary,” he said. One “worked a temporary job in a temporary office. The names of the streets were temporary, so was the city plan. The government was temporary, the capital was temporary, and even the constitution was a ‘temporary provision’.” I recalled this segment again in recent weeks as discussions grew of potential military conflict across the Taiwan Strait. Something else that came to mind was the 1948 essay by the great American author E.B. White, Here Is New York . A love letter to that mesmerising metropolis, the essay turns elegiac toward the end. In the nuclear age, White noted, New York City was always only moments away from destruction: “A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.” Many Americans turned to White’s essay after 9/11 to help them make sense of the terrorist attacks. For months now, aircraft belonging to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have deliberately been making incursions into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, with the apparent aims of intimidating the populace and taxing Taiwan’s air defences. A number of Western observers have lately taken to predicting war in the not-too-distant future, though just as many experts disagree. The most headline-grabbing prophecy came from Admiral Philip Davidson, then head of the Indo-Pacific Command of the US armed forces. In March, he told the US Senate that, in view of Beijing’s ongoing military build-up, he expected it to take over Taiwan by 2027. His immediate successor, Admiral John Aquilino , concurred. The most attention-grabbing headline appeared last month on the cover of The Economist magazine. Above a silhouette of Taiwan at the centre of a radar screen with US and PLA warplanes approaching from opposite sides, the headline read: “The most dangerous place on earth.” The “Century of Humiliation” that began with the First Opium War (1839-42), during which loss of territory was common for China, has defined Beijing’s outlook. Any suggestion that Taiwan may not return to the fold is anathema to it. Indeed, Beijing has repeatedly named Taiwan as one of its “core interests” over which it would be willing to go to war, even against the US. Most people in most corners of the world would reasonably feel a little discomfited upon seeing their homeland described this way, not to mention seeing hostile warplanes fly over it on a regular basis. But most corners of the world are not Taiwan, and most people are not Taiwanese. Ever since Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (KMT) regime escaped to Taiwan in 1949, the people here have lived under the gun. They are used to it. It’s not as though the cross-strait stand-off remained merely a cold war during the Cold War. In October 1949, three weeks after Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China, nearly 10,000 PRC soldiers crossed the sea onto Quemoy, the island off the coast of Fujian province that is also known as Kinmen, to take on the KMT soldiers. The island’s defenders managed to fight them off. But had the battle gone the other way, there would have been no Taiwan as we know it today. The following year, the island of Hainan, then still under KMT control, fell to the PLA. In 1955, the PLA went after the Yijiangshan Islands off the coast of Zhejiang province. Storming the beaches, PLA forces killed or captured all of the island’s fighters. The Taiwan authorities, aided by the US Navy, evacuated other nearby islands. Then in August 1958, a fierce artillery battle broke out, again over Quemoy, which had become Taiwan’s forward operating base. A great many service members on the island fortress lost their lives. In the same year, the two sides fought air and naval battles over the Taiwanese-controlled Matsu Islands. The US, which had previously cooled towards Chiang Kai-shek, only to reaffirm its support for Taiwan in the wake of the Korean war, now declared it was prepared to use nuclear weapons to prevent Taiwan’s conquest. Taiwan’s security guarantee by the US had its genesis then. When the PLA decided to pull back from full-scale war, it began the practice of firing on Quemoy every other day, on the odd-numbered days of the month as a symbolic yet potent gesture that the civil war was not over, the threat of escalation ever-present. The periodic shelling would continue as simply a fact of life until 1979. The US risks forcing China’s hand on Taiwan In 1992, the two sides reached the so-called “92 Consensus”, agreeing that there could only be “one China” without settling with specificity what that phrase meant. But by 1995-96, relations had deteriorated. Lee Teng-hui had acceded to the presidency in Taiwan after Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek’s son and successor, died in office in 1988. In 1995, during Lee’s first term, he visited Cornell University in the US in his private capacity as an alumnus of that institution. That the US permitted such a visit, the first by a sitting leader of Taiwan, caused great consternation in Beijing. Moreover, by 1996, when Lee sought to become the island’s first directly elected president, he had made a number of statements seen by many as favouring Taiwan’s independence, angering especially Beijing. As Taiwan prepared for its presidential election, Beijing ordered missile exercises across the strait to dissuade Taiwanese voters from voting for Lee. They had the opposite effect than was intended –Lee got an electoral fillip from the crisis and won. “From the 1958 war to the 1990s missile crisis, we’ve endured it all,” said Adam Chen, 33, who works in the tech sector. In his view, the United States and other countries would come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of PRC aggression, if only to protect Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, which is critical to the global supply chain. “We’ve been watching this kind of news since we were kids,” said Shane Chen, also 33 and no relation, who works as a sales representative at an educational company. “By now, we’re jian guai bu guai ,” he said, using the Chinese expression literally meaning, “seeing strange, not feeling strange”. “ Jian guai bu guai ” does not mean that the Taiwanese do not recognise the reality of the threat nor that the threat may be imminent. As he drew a fresh pint of Taiwan Beer, the 29-year-old bartender surnamed Du initially expressed shock upon seeing The Economist cover. “What the hell?” he frowned with confusion. “Most dangerous place on earth? What about Afghanistan ?” Upon being told that the headline referred to ongoing cross-strait tensions, Du’s reaction immediately changed. “Oh,” he said, “then that makes sense”. The watering hole where Du works stands opposite Taiwan’s central bank. Across the street on the other side is the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial. The presidential palace is less than a kilometre away. This, Taipei’s administrative district packed with the nerve centres of the government, could expect a fair share of PLA bombs in the event of military action. “I guess it’s because Tsai Ing-wen is in power,” he added. Tsai, Taiwan’s incumbent president, is pro-independence. “But Chen Shui-bian and Lee Teng-hui also used to be in charge,” he recalled with a shrug. Chen Shui-bian, who succeeded Lee as president, also favoured independence from mainland China. As for the cover of The Economist , “I guess it’s good they did it,” Du said. “Makes us Taiwanese more alert to the situation.” But then, underscoring the double consciousness of the Taiwanese caught between vigilance and nonchalance, he added, “We can’t panic. Haven’t North and South Korea been at each other’s throats for 70 years as well?” One major difference between South Korea and Taiwan is the latter’s diplomatic isolation, another fact of Taiwanese life since the US opted to establish ties with the PRC in 1979. The vast majority of countries do not recognise Taiwan, nor is it a member of the United Nations . The PRC has made the recognition of the one-China policy a precondition for diplomatic ties with it. “It’s been tough for the Tsai administration to build relationships,” explained Vanessa Yeh, 36, who teaches digital marketing at one of Taiwan’s universities and heads a business consultancy. “Civil society is the only way we can win any friends globally.” That isolation, along with the vast disparity in size between the island and the mainland, makes Taipei’s position much more precarious than Seoul’s. Australia should beware pounding drums of war over Taiwan Members of the older generation may be more pessimistic than their children. My uncle, who served in uniform on Quemoy during the alternate-day shelling era, feels that the Taiwanese today “lack the guts to fight”. “A few missiles”, he said, “and they’ll be scared to death”, meaning Taiwan’s current political leaders. Historically-minded Taiwanese such as myself may remember with a degree of trepidation that all of this has happened before. And it didn’t work out last time. In the spring of 1661, Zheng Chenggong, often known by his honorific title “Koxinga”, led his fleet out of the port of Quemoy. Although the Manchus had already largely destroyed the Ming dynasty after they breached the Great Wall in 1644, diehard Ming loyalists such as Koxinga continued to resist the new Qing dynasty. By 1661, however, the situation on the mainland had grown hopeless for these loyalists. Koxinga gathered his followers and sailed for Taiwan. There they ousted the Dutch colonialists and established the last bastion of the Ming. When Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT escaped to Taiwan in 1949, they were repeating Koxinga’s manoeuvre. But Koxinga’s manoeuvre ultimately failed. In 1683, on the Kangxi emperor’s orders, Qing forces first took control of the offshore Penghu Islands. Then they proceeded to Taiwan proper. By then led by Koxinga’s 12-year-old grandson, the Taiwanese were so enervated that they surrendered without firing a shot. Thankfully, modern Taiwan is not at risk of being led by a child. Even so, if history is liable to repeat itself, or if it merely rhymes, then Koxinga’s example is sobering. It suggests, has always suggested, that Taiwan is on borrowed time. And the people of Taiwan have always known it. Like Lee Li-Chun said in his xiangsheng act, everything in Taiwan is temporary. Like E.B. White wrote in his essay, a single flight of warplanes can bring this island fantasy to an end. Taiwan is on borrowed time. And the people of Taiwan have always known it William Han Well, what of it? On a recent Sunday afternoon, families with young children braved the drizzle to enjoy the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas on the scenic Lotus Lake in Kaohsiung. On a recent Wednesday, locals and expats alike formed orderly lines on the fifth floor of the Far Eastern Memorial Hospital in New Taipei to receive their Covid-19 vaccine . On a recent Thursday night, food-lovers crowded into a well-known eel restaurant in one corner of the Yongle traditional market in downtown Tainan, once Taiwan’s capital. Setting aside a modest uptick in Covid-19 cases recently, life here goes on as normal, indeed far more normal than in most parts of this pandemic-ravaged world. Because what else are the Taiwanese supposed to do? Live in fear? Chen, the educational company sales representative, was speaking to me on a warm Saturday night. Taipei’s famous, neon-lit nightlife district of Ximending was bustling with young revellers. Chen himself was about to meet friends to go to a nightclub. “We still have to live our lives,” he said as he lit a cigarette. “We’re still going to drink our booze, and we’re still going to go on our dates.” In Strange Tales of Taiwan , Lee Li-Chun in 1991 complained that the construction of Taipei’s metro system or MRT had turned the entire city into a massive, noisy construction site. Well, the MRT is finished now. Pristine and well-kept, it connects the corners of Taipei to each other with great efficiency. Sure, if tomorrow PLA bombs start falling, then the MRT will probably be destroyed or at least damaged. But what else were we supposed to do? Not build it? Don’t be absurd. The spectre of annihilation never stopped New Yorkers from erecting their gleaming skyscrapers. So why should it stop us? After all, everything everywhere is ultimately temporary. As St. Augustine noted, all earthly cities must fall. The Chinese, who have watched a dozen dynasties come and go, surely understand this as well as anyone. Life itself is only a temporary affliction of which we all shall one day be cured. That a thing will inevitably end is all the more reason to treasure it while it lasts. Above one archway at the Koxinga Shrine in Tainan is inscribed a four-character Chinese phrase that roughly translates as, “No one before him ever did what he did.” For his deeds, though Koxinga’s regime ultimately didn’t endure, the man is revered as a national hero on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. In the 72 years since Mao proclaimed the PRC, Taiwan has evolved into a full-fledged liberal democracy. Whatever its legal status, no one in Chinese history ever did what we have done here. That will remain the case even if tomorrow our island fantasy comes to an abrupt and fiery end. In a thousand years, history books will still say that here was the first ever culturally Chinese democracy. Here is Taiwan. William Han is a lawyer and writer. Born in Taiwan and a citizen of New Zealand, he is a graduate of Yale College and Columbia Law School