Taiwan’s Provocative Existence

The New York Times described an unprecedentedly large Chinese military exercise aimed at surrounding Taiwan with a mock blockade on Monday as “a warning to Taiwan’s government after the island’s president, Lai Ching-te, made a speech on National Day last week that China regarded as a message promoting independence.” I was in the front row for that speech. It seems that what Beijing regards as subversive separatism is subject to interpretation.

Lai’s address on Taiwanese National Day, a holiday commemorating the uprising that resulted in the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1911, was hardly belligerent. “Their dream was to establish a democratic republic of the people,” the president said of those who “overthrew the imperial regime” of the Qing dynasty. “Their ideal was to create a nation of freedom, equality, and benevolence. However, the dream of democracy was engulfed in the raging flames of war.” Lai invoked the great battles of China’s revolutionary war — a war Chiang Kai-shek’s forces lost — and the Taiwan Strait crises that soon followed. “Though the Republic of China was driven out of the international community, the people of Taiwan have never exiled themselves,” Lai added. If this is a poor substitute for raw nationalistic bellicosity, it will have to do.

Lai went on to tout his island’s commercial enterprises, its foreign aid, and the promise of expanding its already vast welfare programs to its citizens. He insisted that neither the Republic of China nor the People’s Republic of China are “subordinate to each other.” He asserted that Beijing “has no right to represent Taiwan,” and the president regards his mandate from Taiwan’s voters as one that compels him to “resist annexation or encroachment upon our sovereignty.” But while not all Taiwanese agree with these goals, “we have always been willing to keep moving forward hand-in-hand.”

Casual observers might see in Lai’s remarks enough to justify Beijing’s outsize reaction to them. After all, he did insist that Taiwan is and will remain a separate political entity from the one governed by the Chinese Communist Party, and he pledged to preserve that condition. But closer observers of the region noted that, tonally, the address was “more measured” than his inaugural address and less provocative than remarks delivered by his predecessor in the presidency. A lot of good that softening did Taiwan among its tormentors in Beijing. The People’s Republic reacted to the scaled-back rhetoric in this speech as though it were an act of war — a reaction that suggests war is China’s preferred outcome.

The Taiwanese are confident, though. Perhaps too confident. Officials in and around government seem convinced that their dominance of the global semiconductor industry represents a deterrent against aggression. They can hold the world’s consumer electronics industry hostage in the event of hostilities that would make pandemic-era supply-chain disruptions pale in comparison.

But what if deterrence fails? Lai administration officials are quick to defend the sums they’re committing to their own defense, which many regard as insufficient given the acute threat facing their island. The amounts they are spending on defense as a percentage of GDP outstrips many NATO allies, they say, and large amphibious invasions are historically fraught prospects. But I raised invasion scenarios — including those that consist of large-scale air and sea operations that rely on subversive domestic elements for success — that produced drawn faces from my interlocutors. And for an economy that is set to become the world’s 20th largest by purchasing power in 2026, justifying a 2.5 percent of GDP defense-spending commitment because it’s greater than Luxembourg’s rings hollow.

There should be no question that the scale of China’s naval and air-force exercises represents an existential threat to Taiwan’s sovereignty. Moreover, the supposed offense that justified them is little more than Taiwan’s existence. The dragon will not be appeased.