Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ities. That is why the American quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan have been particularly
devastating news for Taiwan.
Even as China envelops Taiwan militarily, it does so economically and socially. Taiwan
does 30 percent of its trade with China, with 40 percent of its exports going to the mainland.
There are 270 commercial flights per week between Taiwan and the mainland. Two-thirds
of Taiwanese companies, some ten thousand, have made investments in China in the last
five years. There are direct postal links and common crime fighting, with half a million
mainland tourists coming to the island annually, and 750,000 Taiwanese residing in China
for half the year. In all there are five million cross-straits visits each year. There will be
less and less of a need for an invasion when subtle economic warfare will achieve the same
a future of greater integration appears likely, the way it develops will be pivotal for great
power politics. Were the United States simply to abandon Taiwan, that could undermine
America's bilateral relationships with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and
other Pacific allies, let alone with India and even some states in Africa, which will begin
to doubt America's other bilateral commitments, thus encouraging them to move closer to
China, allowing for a Greater China of truly hemispheric proportions to emerge. The Un-
ited States and Taiwan must look at qualitative, asymmetric ways of their own to counter
China militarily. The aim is not to be able to defeat China in a straits war, but to make a
war too costly for China to seriously contemplate, and thus pry loose functional Taiwanese
independence long enough for China to become a more liberal society, so that the United
States can continue to maintain credibility with its allies. In this way, Taiwan's layered mis-
sile defense and its three hundred antiaircraft shelters, coupled with a sale of $6.4 billion
worth of weapons to Taiwan, announced by the Obama administration in early 2010, is vi-
tal to America's position in Eurasia overall. The goal of transforming China domestically
is not a pipe dream. Remember that the millions of Chinese tourists who come to Taiwan
watch its spirited political talk shows and shop in its bookstores with their subversive titles.
A more open China is certainly more of a possibility than a repressive one. But a more
democratic China could be an even more dynamic great power than a repressive China, in
an economic, cultural, and hence in a military sense.
Beneath Taiwan on the map looms the South China Sea, framed by the demographic
cockpit of mainland Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, with Australia further
afield. A third of all seaborne commercial goods worldwide and half of all the energy re-
quirements for Northeast Asia pass through here. As the gateway to the Indian Ocean—the
world's hydrocarbon interstate, where China is involved in several port development pro-
jects—the South China Sea must in some future morrow be virtually dominated by the
Chinese navy if Greater China is truly to be realized. Here we have the challenges of pir-
acy, radical Islam, and the naval rise of India, coupled with the heavily congested geo-
