Taipei.
Taiwan fears an invasion by China – the population is preparing for a possible war. A look into a country in fear.
In Taiwan for a long time it was thought that a war with China would not come. Everything would be fine. This assessment changed with Russia’s attack on Ukraine: the small island is now preparing for the worst.
So does Wen Liu. When she talks about her new pastime, her voice gets louder and her speaking speed faster. “I’ve learned how to climb the smartest way and how the logistics of critical goods work.” Wen Liu, a full-time professor of ethnology at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, is just getting to know another world. “I have one too military course participated,” she says. And she has many people in her circle of acquaintances who have already trained with a softgun.
Is there a war with China? Taiwan sees the danger
On the phone, Wen Liu tells how sensitized her home country has been over the past few months. “Until recently nobody wanted over War talk.” But now the topic is on the agenda. Several non-governmental organizations have started offering self-defense courses. “The field of participants is amazingly diverse,” says Wen Liu. “It’s not just military geeks. Young mothers too. And many people who don’t really think politically at all.” People who wanted to protect themselves. Also interesting: Habeck report surprises – China could annex Taiwan by 2027
In Taiwan, an island with 24 million people south of the Chinese mainland, the Danger of a war these days as absolutely real. Xi Jinping, who governs mainland China from Beijing, has repeatedly announced “unification” with Taiwan – if necessary under duress. And what used to sound like the barking of a cheeky dog to many has felt a lot more threatening in recent months. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has opened the eyes of many people,” says Wen Liu.
In the video: Taiwan policy – Scholz warns China of escalation
Private individuals in Taiwan are practicing for the war
More and more people are preparing for emergencies. You can see it not only in the defense courses, which are obviously in great demand. The political debate is also war scenario embossed. Parliamentarians are calling for longer jail terms for those who cooperate with mainland Chinese actors in ways that threaten Taiwan’s security. In addition, military service could be increased to one year. It is common to hear people with a different opinion being accused of either trivialization or warmongering.
At first glance, the opportunities for Taiwan seem tiny: Mainland China, which considers democratically governed Taiwan to be part of its own territory, is infinitely larger in terms of area and population. Accordingly, Beijing has a much stronger one military, which the latest attempts at rearmament by the Taiwanese government can hardly make up for. On the other hand, the United States and Japan have made it clear that they would side with Taiwan in the event of an invasion by Beijing. And the Ukraine war showed what military support can do.
Taiwan in the conflict with China: The origins go back more than 70 years
Of the Taiwan conflict has its origins in the Chinese civil war, which ended in 1949 with the victory of the communists. Their opponents, the supporters of the Nationalist Party (KMT) and its leader Chiang Kai-shek, had meanwhile fled to the island of Taiwan and were planning to reconquer the mainland from there. As time passed, the nationalists became more at home in Taiwan. But as the Great Economic Miracle began in mainland China, claims to control of Taiwan gradually grew louder there as well. Read about this: One China, Two States – How the Taiwan Conflict Began
Taiwan, where after the death of Chiang from the 1980s, the transition from a military dictatorship to a democracy succeeded is deeply divided today. Officially, nobody wants to go back to the dictatorship, and there are no longer any calls for mainland China to be recaptured. But not everyone likes the hard line that President Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are taking towards Beijing.
Criticism of the Taiwan government: “It is very unwise”
“The DPP doesn’t understand how to make a good connection Beijing entertains,” says Chieh-cheng Huang. In a meeting room of the National Policy Foundation, a think tank of the now opposition KMT, he doesn’t give Tsai a good hair. “Your party advertises provoking China. That’s very unwise!” Tsai campaigned wisely, but pursued stupid politics. At the same time, she must position herself on the NGOs, which are now training the population and are actually taking on state tasks. “But nothing has been heard from the President!” Also read the comment: Conflict between China and Taiwan – The end of all illusions
Chieh-cheng Huang, a man with gray hair and suspenders, also considers the new self-defense courses, which are financed by wealthy patriots but maintained without close contact with the Ministry of Defense, to be naïve. He has an assistant bring a camouflage jacket into his room. “This is my jacket. But am I one warriorbecause it has camouflage patterns?” Right now, Huang says, you have to de-escalate. “We haven’t had an armed conflict in 64 years, China hasn’t since 1979. We both would fight like amateurs! What shoud that?”
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