It’s been a tough week for opinions section editors, following embarrassing admissions from the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal that prominent contributors had written op-eds entirely with AI. That may just be the tip of the iceberg.

Analysis by Formosa Review indicates that a recent op-ed on Taiwan published in the Chicago Tribune was copy & pasted from a perpetually repackaged op-ed, likely updated with AI, possibly with Chinese models that hallucinated key elements of Taiwan’s history and politics with obvious factual errors. The author, Arthur I. Cyr, is a formerly tenured professor (now emeritus) of International Political Economy at Carthage College in Wisconsin.

The piece is in clear violation of at least one stated policy of the Chicago Tribune:

It is also quite likely in violation of a second Tribune policy:

The op-ed’s pro-China bent is one problem, serving to mislead the American public, but the basic factual errors throughout the piece make it clear that such a pro-China position can only be sustained through egregious misreadings of historical and present facts in Taiwan.

I will first highlight the explicit copy & paste nature of the op-ed, which has been repeatedly published in near identical form over the past 12 years, then address the egregious factual errors, before addressing the terminological and framing bent of the article and how it serves China’s propaganda needs both in the US and Taiwan.

Blatant Self-plagiarism

Nearly identical forms of the same op-ed have been published in 2014 in the Korea Times, in 2015 on Carthage College’s website, in 2016 in the Providence Journal, in 2024 in the Stars and Stripes, and on August 25, 2026 in the Chicago Tribune’s Lake County News-Sun.

Three paragraphs appear copied verbatim from the 2024 Stars and Stripes piece:

This continues significant political complications with mainland China. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has won three presidential elections in a row. The party is formally committed to independence from China.

However, Mr. Lai’s vote margin was reduced, and the DPP also lost its legislative majority. The conservative Kuomintang (KMT) gained the most seats. Over time, this could prove a diplomatic plus given its more flexible relations with Beijing.

China is not happy about continued DPP control of the executive office, but greater KMT presence in the legislature provides opportunities for cultivation. China media have been relatively restrained about this election result compared to past extreme rhetoric.

Several paragraphs appear verbatim or with one or two word changes in all pieces from at least 2014-present:

The two sides share a bitter legacy of battle and blood. In 1949, Nationalist forces of General Chiang Kai-shek evacuated to Taiwan. Mao Zedong’s armies controlled the mainland of China. Except for the island territory, the communist revolution was complete.

The Korean War of 1950-1953 made the Cold War global, with China and the United States as direct combatants. U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s security became explicit.

The first DPP government, from 2000 to 2008, was able to finesse the political challenges with Beijing. Today, economic concerns remain more important than ideological purity for China’s challenged communist leadership.

Taiwan has become an essential investor for the enormous industrial revolution taking place on the mainland. Commercially successful, generally well-educated overseas Chinese in turn are a vital source of capital for the mainland. Expatriate Chinese also vote in Taiwan elections.

The foundation of cooperation has been built steadily, over time. Pragmatism characterizes Taiwan’s approach to mainland China. Following formal U.S. diplomatic recognition of Beijing in 1978, in consequence of President Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit, Taipei immediately launched a comprehensive essentially non-confrontational strategic response.

In 2010, the bilateral Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) was concluded. This was a major triumph for then-President Ma Ying-jeou. His election as chief executive in 2008 and 2012 greatly furthered rapprochement with Beijing, though negotiations on representative offices were unsuccessful.

Altogether, this copy & paste job accounts for more than 60% of the op-ed’s purported original writing, with most of the remainder made-up of mild tweaks of previously used language, such as:

The ECFA framework is now so strong that a return to earlier hostility across the Taiwan Strait is extremely unlikely. (2015, Carthage College)

The ECFA framework is now so strong that a return to earlier hostility across the Taiwan Strait is unlikely. (2024, Stars and Stripes)

The ECFA framework remains sufficient to prevent a return to unmitigated hostility. (2026, Chicago Tribune)

The Chicago Tribune declined to comment, citing that Mr. Cyr’s op-ed was published under the Lake County Sun subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune, claiming they have separate standards and editorial staff. The Lake County Sun is published on the Tribune website, its editors have Tribune emails, and it posts no separate editorial policy or indication that articles published under the Lake County Sun heading fall under a different set of policies than other articles similarly appearing on the Tribune website, under the Tribune’s masthead. The article has been further syndicated by the Tribune Media Company on various media including the official newspaper of the Department of Defense: Stars and Stripes.

Fact from Fiction

Compounding the professional ethical violations are the egregious factual errors that have now been repeated year after year as editor after editor has approved the same regurgitated slop for print. These errors at best misinform the public, and at worst advance China’s propaganda agenda pertaining Taiwan.

Mr. Cyr’s first factual error is a common one that in a different context might be viewed more charitably. He refers to the Kuomintang or Chinese Nationalist Party as the “conservative party,” when in reality it is a big tent nationalist party of Leninist origins and with left- and right-wing elements. Many of the KMT’s policies, particularly regarding state intervention in the market and expanding the welfare state, are decisively more left wing than the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which is similarly a big tent nationalist party with left and right wings. The main difference between the two parties is one of nationalism: the KMT is a party of Chinese nationalism and the DPP is a party of Taiwanese nationalism, two strongly conflicting ideologies and the main ideological cleavage in Taiwanese politics.

Cyr claims that, following the January 2024 election of Lai Ching-te, “China [sic] media have been relatively restrained about this election result compared to past extreme rhetoric.”

He (or an AI agent) likely took the language of “relatively restrained” from a post-election Council on Foreign Relations report by David Sachs, which claimed China had a relatively restrained response in the days immediately following the election. In reality, China responded to the election by claiming that the election “cannot represent the mainstream public opinion on the island” and attacking foreign leaders for congratulating Lai and Taiwan on the successful election.

Just three days after Lai’s May 20, 2024 inauguration, China began massive aggressive war drills in the waters surrounding Taiwan, with Chinese officials stating that the drills should be interpreted as “strong punishment” to Mr. Lai. Cyr is far from the only commentator who echoed the “relatively restrained” interpretation following Lai’s election, but Cyr’s August 2026 article seems to be entirely unaware of any events after May 22, 2024. Most commentators, including on the pro-China end of the spectrum, have since revised their takes.

Cyr next writes bafflingly: “The first DPP government, from 2000 to 2008, was able to finesse the political challenges with Beijing. Today, economic interests remain more important than ideological purity for China.”

In reality, the first DPP government, under President Chen Shui-bian, faced unprecedented political pressure from China, including repeated threats to invade Taiwan, culminating in the 2005 passage of the Anti-Secession Law, a Chinese law that, while having no jurisdiction over Taiwan, asserts Beijing’s right to militarily invade Taiwan. The following sentence on economic interests overriding ideological purity makes no semantic sense, and syntactically reads as generative AI slop.

Cyr then positively presents the signing of controversial pacts opening up critical sectors of Taiwan’s market, including the media sector, to China, as successful triumphs for KMT President Ma Ying-jeou, whom he incorrectly refers to as Taiwan’s “Chief Executive,” a term not used in Taiwan, but used instead in Hong Kong. It’s possible the term was inserted by a Chinese AI model, as Chinese AI models are prohibited from referring to Taiwan’s elected leaders as “president,” however the first appearance of the error is in 2016, before the widespread advent of generative AI.

The hotly contested ECFA (Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement) was not supported by a majority of the Taiwanese public, leading the Ma government to quash efforts to put the agreement to a referendum. When Ma attempted to force through a secretly negotiated addendum to the agreement in 2014, students organized the Sunflower Movement, occupying the legislature and stopping the government from passing the secret legislation through a backdoor “black box” method. The addendum has been shelved and remains deeply unpopular; since the Sunflower movement, no KMT candidate has won a presidential election in Taiwan.

Cyr then states one of the most egregious outright lies in the entire piece by stating that “Expatriate Chinese also vote in Taiwan elections.” This is simply false and has no basis in the truth. Only Taiwanese citizens have the right to vote in Taiwanese elections. Certainly, there are some naturalized citizens of Taiwan who are of ethnic Chinese background and may consider themselves “Expatriate Chinese,” but this is no category under Taiwanese law. Even expatriate Taiwanese are not eligible to vote in Taiwanese elections, with a prohibition on absentee voting and a requirement to maintain household registration in Taiwan to be eligible to vote.

Cyr closes the piece claiming ECFA has been a major success, and in fact to be a basis for expanded cooperation between Taiwan and China.

This is where Cyr’s self-plagiarism and dishonesty catches up with the facts. He first wrote some variation of the line “the ECFA framework remains sufficient to prevent a return to unmitigated hostility” in 2014, during the Ma Ying-jeou administration and the height of cross-strait cooperation, when indeed it could be feasible to claim that economic integration under ECFA would prevent a return to hostilities.

It seems Mr. Cyr has updated neither his prose nor his knowledge since 2014. Following the election of President Tsai Ing-wen, a major opponent of ECFA, in 2016, and the continued election of DPP presidents in 2020 and 2024, China has unilaterally cut off dialogue with Taiwan, escalated military exercises aimed at blockading or simulating an invasion of Taiwan, sent fighter jets nearly daily across the median line separating the two countries, in addition to extreme levels of grayzone aggression and transnational repression against Taiwan. It has issued arrest warrants for Taiwanese politicians, threatened invasion multiple times, fired missiles over Taiwan into Japan’s EEZ, and even illegally boarded Taiwanese civilian ferries.

By 2024, when Mr. Cyr was writing that ECFA was “now so strong that a return to earlier hostility across the Taiwan Strait is unlikely,” China had largely terminated much of the ECFA tariff reductions, with ECFA itself becoming a source of hostilities, rather than an impediment to them. Taiwan’s government has claimed that China has weaponized ECFA as a tool of economic coercion to attempt to influence Taiwanese politics and elections. ECFA has become wildly unpopular and Taiwan has reoriented its economy so it is no longer dependent on China, now counting the United States as its top trading partner.

Who gets to tell Taiwan’s story?

It is clear that Cyr has little understanding of Taiwan’s politics, history, or current affairs. Why then does he continuously churn out the same recycled take in every newspaper possible?

An overriding motif of his sole take on Taiwan is support for China’s view of history: he refers to China as “the mainland” and Taiwan as “the island,” and has effusive praise for President Ma Ying-jeou, who has largely faded from public view after public statements calling for “trusting Xi Jinping.” Ma left office with approval ratings of around 15%, and now struggles with what appears to be dementia.

Mr. Cyr does not speak with coherence on Taiwan. He praises DPP presidents, while calling for them to implement policies so extremely pro-China that even the KMT has backed away from them. His commentary evinces little understanding of Taiwan’s politics, national identity, or recent history. His lack of coherence perhaps indicates that he is not explicitly being directed by China, and he may not even be aware that he is furthering pro-China narratives, simply accepting willing direction from Chinese AI models.

But why have so many supposedly reputable US newspapers accepted and possibly paid for the same inaccurate, verbatim copy-pasted, trite essay for more than a decade? Does it say something about the laziness of these publications in covering one of the most important geopolitical hotspots in the world? Or something simpler about the lack of basic quality control, authentication, and fact-checking at second and third tier news outlets?

Perhaps it also says something about the reluctance of Taiwanese writers to put themselves and their voices forward to a broader variety of publications and media and tell Taiwan’s story well.

Publications in all languages need more and a wider variety of voices on Taiwan- especially from Taiwanese themselves. Taiwanese, often humble and deferential (in contrast to many Americans), tend to be reluctant to write in foreign media, sometimes due to concerns about their own English writing capabilities or stature.

Yet the Cyr example demonstrates that literally anyone with low expertise and low quality of analysis can be widely syndicated. Taiwanese should take note. Non-native English speakers can responsibly use AI for grammar assistance, when appropriately disclosed, or co-write with foreign native-speaking authors if needed.

One of the most important and underappreciated recent developments in the pro-Taiwan media space has been the emergence of the Taiwan Advocacy Project, a great initiative offering rewards of up to 100,000 NTD (~3000 USD) for Taiwanese authors published in a wide range of foreign media. I hope that as many English-speaking Taiwanese as possible take up the challenge and tell the world the truth about Taiwan- the demand for information about Taiwan continues to outpace the production of accurate information about the country.

Professor Cyr did not respond to a request for comment.

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I hope Taiwan will soon return to the motherland. The phrase, barked in the sharp consonants of Northeastern Mandarin Chinese, was not new to me. But hearing it from a uniformed crewmember aboard a ferry in Taiwan’s strategic Keelung harbor was, to say the least, unsettling.

I was aboard the Yaima Maru, a new passenger ferry bound for the Japanese island of Ishigaki, part of Okinawa prefecture and lying just 300 kilometers off the coast of Taiwan. The new ferry restores direct ferry service between Japan and Taiwan after nearly 20 years, but also carries a much more significant and sensitive role than simply ferrying Taiwanese holidaymakers to Ishigaki’s pristine beaches and diving waters. International headlines have focused on a rare admission from Japanese authorities that the Yaima Maru has been designated as a “war evacuation ferry” to be used to evacuate residents of Ishigaki and the surrounding Yaeyama islands to mainland Japan in the case of a Taiwan contingency.

Closer to Taipei than to Naha, the capital of Okinawa prefecture, the Yaeyama islands have long had an intricate history and culture closely linked with that of Taiwan (Yaima is the local pronunciation of Yaeyama).

In 1871 a Miyako and Yaeyama tributary ship returning from Okinawa was shipwrecked on Taiwan and its subsequently massacred by indigenous Paiwanese; Japan took advantage of the situation to formalize its annexation of the Ryukyu Kingdom, as well as send its first overseas military expedition to Taiwan, laying the groundwork for its subsequent colonization of Taiwan in 1895. Ishigaki’s unique culture of pineapple cultivation and water buffalo carts was introduced by Taiwanese migrants during the Japanese period. The ferry restores longstanding historical ties between Taiwanese and Yaeyama peoples.

I have long been a proponent of increasing ferry links between Okinawa and Taiwan, in order to foster mutual understanding between the two peoples, given the immense sacrifice that will be imposed on Okinawa in the event of war.

Until today, it has not been publicly reported that among the ship’s crew are nationals of the People’s Republic of China. If China attacks or blockades Taiwan, Japan’s ability to evacuate civilians from the war zone may be dependent on ships crewed by Chinese nationals. Even more concerning, unvetted Chinese nationals have been given access to critical dual-use port infrastructure in Keelung port next to Taipei, home to one of Taiwan’s five naval logistic support commands as well as a Coast Guard base.

The security of Taiwan’s northern ports has come to the forefront in recent weeks after a fisherman found a Chinese rubber boat had illegally landed in New Taipei City. Two Chinese intruders were later detained by the Coast Guard following the civilian’s complaint, and it remains unclear whether the intruders were engaged in espionage, penetration testing, sabotage, smuggling, or any number of illegal activities threatening Taiwan’s sovereignty.

Yet Taiwanese and Japanese authorities seem unperturbed by the presence of unvetted Chinese seafarers in and around critical port infrastructure. Multinational crews are common on ocean liners and aircraft landing in Taiwan, but this is the first reported instance of Chinese crew in designated national security infrastructure. Taiwanese officials have refused to directly answer whether or not Chinese crew members are allowed to disembark in Keelung and how much access to the port they have.

Formosa Review submitted a detailed list of questions to a number of Taiwanese and Japanese government agencies about whether Chinese crew members of the Yaima Maru are vetted for ties to the Chinese military, intelligence services, United Front organizations, or whether they are allowed to disembark in Keelung, as well as the decision in the first place to employ Chinese crew members.

Authorities with the Port of Keelung reiterated Taiwanese regulations and laws governing access to ports and the issuance of temporary landing permits to Chinese seafarers. According to a manger of the port, who did not want to be publicly named in this report, responsibility for port security and screenings of Chinese crew members falls under the Maritime and Port Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and the issuance of temporary landing permits the responsibility of the National Immigration Agency.

When reached for comment, Ms. Chiu from the Maritime and Port Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications stated that, as the Yaima Maru is a Panamanian-flagged vessel “neither the vessel nor its crew falls under our country’s jurisdiction.”

Ms. Chiu’s statement directly conflicted with a statement from a Keelung port official that “With respect to national security matters, [the National Immigration Agency] works with intelligence agencies and relevant authorities to conduct checks.”

Alice Hu of the National Immigration Agency, which falls under the Ministry of the Interior, issued a statement reiterating Taiwan’s existing regulations regarding the issuance of temporary entry permits to Chinese air or sea crew, which are issued for a maximum of three days. No answer was given as to whether any vetting is in place to ensure these crew members, even if they are not clearing immigration procedures and entering into Taiwan, do not have ties to Chinese military or intelligence services.

When asked if any Chinese crew from the Yaima Maru had been issued entry permits to Taiwan, Ms. Hu declined to answer, citing privacy reasons. In prior cases, the agency has publicly confirmed it has issued entry permits to Chinese nationals, including a controversial case a few months ago when eight Chinese technicians were given entry permits to conduct sensitive work in Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport.

Nobody has come up with a credible explanation why the crew of the Yaima Maru, also made up of Taiwanese and Indonesians, includes so many Chinese nationals. Multiple inquiries to the ferry’s operator, Wagon Group, a Taiwanese shipping company with extensive business interests in China, went unanswered.

Written requests in Japanese to the Ishigaki city government, which is the main shareholder in the operation, as well as inquiries to multiple prefectural and national level agencies responsible for seafaring, disaster management, and defense coordination went unanswered. The sole response from any Japanese authority was an email from the Ships and Seafarers Division of the Transport Department of the Okinawa General Bureau, which confirmed the agency responsible for this issue would be the Crisis Management Division, Governor’s Office, Okinawa Prefectural Government. Written requests to this office have as of yet been unanswered.

Could the Yaima Maru be a “Trojan Seahorse?”

Over the past year, China has aggressively increased its attempts to assert sovereignty over waters east of Taiwan, including requesting foreign ships to identify themselves and their cargo and conducting provocative exercises with Indonesia’s navy. It also claims the Japanese-held Senkaku islands as its own, and has often lent its support to Okinawan independence movements, claiming that the status of the Ryukyus remains unresolved.

These are the very waters the Yaima Maru plies. Even short of a Taiwan contingency and even without the crew members entering Taiwan, the presence of unvetted Chinese crew members poses massive risks. Nobody knows who these young military-age Chinese citizens are: are they tried PLA Navy? They could be intelligence agents collecting human or signals intelligence along the critical Keelung-Yaeyama channel- a channel which is essential to Taiwan defeating an attempted Chinese blockade.

The current crew may simply be civilians, but surely future crew members could be substituted for trained agents or saboteurs. It would not take many individuals to hijack or disable the unguarded civilian ferry on the high seas.

One can easily imagine a scenario where Chinese agents among the crew, which have full access to passenger manifests, could discover “die-hard Taiwan separatists” such as Japanese-Taiwanese national Akio Yaita, who was recently assaulted by a Chinese agent in what Taiwan’s government has called an act of “transnational repression,” or DPP legislator and candidate for Taipei mayor Puma Shen, who is subject to a Chinese arrest warrant for his outspoken defense of Taiwan’s sovereignty.

It would be trivial for Chinese agents to disable the vessel and signal to Chinese Coast Guard ships waiting nearby to “provide aid,” during which a boarding party would arrest and detain the “die-hard separatists,” never to be seen again outside of a Chinese court room.

This is but one of dozens of scenarios Chinese agents aboard the ship could orchestrate. The range of possible incidents include disabling the ship to block channels into Keelung harbor, collecting intelligence on Taiwanese naval and coast guard facilities, smuggling illicit materials or individuals in or out of Taiwan, surveilling port facilities to help Chinese small boats enter undetected, and of course: impeding wartime evacuations.

Somehow, on a Panamanian flagged ship owned by a Japanese city and operated by a Taiwanese private corporation with extensive financial ties to China, national security responsibilities seem to have fallen through the cracks.

When I asked one of the Taiwanese crew how it was working side-by-side with so many Chinese, he said relations were haihao (okay).

“You see,” he said, “on board, we are in Panama.”

This week in Taiwan, as the country undergoes its largest annual military exercises, involving air, sea, and land drills and calling up thousands of reservists, the international media are asking again and again: are the Taiwanese ready for war? Polls consistently suggest a clear majority of Taiwanese are willing to fight, yet the midnight debates in Taipei (and in Washington) endlessly interrogate the size of the gap between what many young Taiwanese men will say on the phone compared with how many will actually show up on the brink of war to defend their shores and likely die for their nation.

It’s an important question. I think the Taiwanese will be more likely than not to defend their homeland. But perhaps more intriguing is whether China is ready to send tens of thousands of single sons to their deaths for so-called national unity.

I’m not entirely convinced.

Earlier this week, China officially confirmed that two Coast Guard personnel were “martyred” in a high-profile incident last year when a Chinese Coast Guard cutter crashed into a Chinese Navy destroyer while harassing a Philippine Coast Guard ship in the disputed waters surrounding the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea.

The Scarborough Shoal is illegally occupied by China yet claimed by the Philippines, which is far closer to the atoll than China is. An international tribunal ruled in 2016 that China’s claims of sovereignty were without effect, and affirmed the rights of both countries’ fishermen to access traditional waters. China’s response has been to chase away Filipino fishermen with violence and illegally restrict their access, prompting the Philippines Coast Guard to patrol in protection of its fishermen.

Taiwan’s response has mysteriously been not to support an allied democracy, its third most important military ally, the Philippines, against China’s expansion, but to instead side with China, with the DPP government incongruously resurrecting ROC claims to the entire South China Sea to claim incorrectly that the Scarborough Shoal belongs to Taiwan. Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry reiterated the absurd claim this week, without a clear explanation as to why it feels a strong need to speak out on this issue while also happy to ignore the ROC’s claim to Mongolia or the Senkaku Islands.

The Philippines had previously asserted in the days following the August 2025 incident that two Chinese Coast Guardsmen had been killed in the collision. China refused to confirm any casualties, and aggressively censored any discussion on the Chinese internet speculating that Chinese personnel may have died in the incident.

It took nearly exactly a full year for Chinese authorities to publicly acknowledge the deaths of the two young men, and even as their official citations with the Ministry of Veterans’ Affairs list them as “martyrs” who died “heroically,” there remains no official statement or official commemoration of their deaths. Chatter is rising on the Chinese internet, but the government has yet to explain to its people why these young men died a thousand kilometers from their homeland, or even publicly commemorate their sacrifice for the nation.

The delay comes as no surprise. China has long struggled to deal with the fatal fallout of its modern border skirmishes with its neighbors. The episode almost exactly parallels a much more violent incident in 2020 when Indian and Chinese forces skirmished for months along the two countries’ undemarcated Himalayan frontier. Restrained by the threat of nuclear escalation, the two armies have long resorted to hand-to-hand combat in the hundreds of standoffs and skirmishes that have broken out in the years following the 1962 Indo-Chinese war.

Yet in June of 2020 the two sides met with sticks, clubs, and bare fists resulting in the first fatalities on the border in decades. Facing off on high-altitude rocky terrain, some soldiers were reportedly shoved to their deaths off the sheer rock face, others bludgeoned by clubs, rocks, and iron rods. India immediately acknowledged that 20 of its own soldiers had been killed, and claimed a similar number of Chinese troops had been killed in the most intense combat on June 15.

China had no idea how to respond. Refusing to confirm any deaths had occurred, discussion of potential Chinese fatalities was censored on Chinese media and military families were reportedly barred from properly burying or cremating soldiers’ remains, in direct violation of State Council Decree No. 601 on Regulations on Commendation of Martyrs.

It was not until eight months later, in February of the following year, that China acknowledged that four soldiers had died in the clashes, with no explanation for the eight month delay or the discrepancy with much larger figures reported by Indian and foreign media, which claimed 20-30 Chinese soldiers had died.

Despite the elegizing of the fallen as heroes defending sacred territory, what followed was an intense crackdown on discussion of the casualties online, with at least six prosecutions for questioning the official tallies or otherwise questioning the official narrative. It is also claimed that Chinese authorities even sought to arrest a 19-year old US permanent resident for online comments, pressuring UAE authorities to detain him in Dubai while in transit from Istanbul to New York. While the dissident, Wang Jingyu, was later freed, he came to notoriety in later years for orchestrating a massive global fraud scheme, and Dubai authorities claim his detention was over unpaid hotel bills and “criticizing Islam.”

Memento Mori

It is almost unheard of for a country to wait a year before acknowledging troops have been killed, particularly when it is so openly acknowledged by the other side, or recorded on film, as both the Galwan and Scarborough incidents were.

In the United States, it has already become a minor scandal that the Defense Department was covering up the number of war dead in the ongoing war with Iran, with public pressure so immense that the Pentagon reversed course within a few days. The US is a country that has long been at war, and long too accustomed to needlessly sacrificing its youth overseas in foreign wars. Yet the commemoration of war dead remains solemn, particularly following the Vietnam War, and US presidents are expected to preside over in-person the repatriation of fallen service members.

This somber commemoration of American war dead is part of what enables the US to continue to wage foreign wars, a tacit agreement that honors sacrifice and bestows immense benefits on veterans in exchange for a state that is continuously at war. Gold star families are considered national heroes, and fallen soldiers are immediately memorialized in news broadcasts and public commemoration.

India similarly has long been at war and has a deep public reverence for fallen soldiers and national memorialization. It reported its war dead within hours of the Galwan clashes, and while there are disputes over the governments’ actions during the standoff, casualty numbers are not suppressed nor is discussion of war losses. India, like the US, is long accustomed to the national reckoning of dealing with the human cost of war, having fought numerous border wars with its neighbors, as well as contending with major internal security and terror issues.

A fundamental difference is that India’s war dead perish on or within its own borders, whereas American soldiers perish in distant conflicts overseas, often in countries Americans cannot find on a map. The result is that the American political and media establishment invest a great deal into justifying foreign wars, even when they are very clearly not in American interests, because the backlash to Americans dying senselessly overseas is so furious.

China finds itself somewhere in between the two countries- its military engagements are within its claimed borders, yet often quite far away from China. While China’s ultranationalist population readily accepts and defends aggressive claims to foreign lands in India, the Philippines, or Taiwan, whether they are actually ready to accept as the cost of irredentism the lives of their single sons is a far more complex question.

The dovish US-China Perception Monitor ( on Substack) claims that a small majority of Chinese oppose the use of force to taken Taiwan. The number intuitively feels incorrect, given the near universal support in China for the fiction that Taiwan is part of their nation, and the ability of the government to unleash the drumbeats of war and nationalism when it needs to. It likely reflects that a majority of Chinese would certainly prefer to take Taiwan peacefully, which is in line with the official government stance, claiming to want peaceful so-called “unification” while openly threatening to use military force.

Yet for all its bellicose rhetoric and dangerous posturing in the air and seas around Taiwan, a gap clearly remains between the rhetoric of war and the reality of sending tens of thousands of Chinese sons home in body bags. The incidents in Scarborough and Galwan make that abundantly clear: if it cannot handle two or even a dozen deaths on the high mountains or high seas, even on territory it claims to be Chinese, China is not remotely prepared to handle the tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths of a war to conquer Taiwan.

Vietnam Syndrome

China has yet to heal its own scars from Vietnam. Veterans of that ill-fated war are as forgotten as the war itself. Amputees, banished from the swanky streets of Shanghai and Shenzhen, are by no means rare to see in the streets of China’s less fortunate regional capitals and smaller cities. Many are certainly victims of untreated diabetes (despite China’s supposed universal healthcare), but no small number are casualties of China’s failed 1979 invasion of Vietnam, considerably more remain hidden at home by their families.

Veterans of the forgotten war have been a persistent thorn in Beijing’s side, organizing mass protests in the past decades over grievances of being abandoned by the state after serving in Vietnam, left jobless and penniless. China’s response has been cautious, clamping down on protests while also attempting to placate their demands.

The Chinese Communist Party values stability, as most regimes do, and it will think long and hard before making any decision that threatens to wrest control of the country from the Party that has ruled it for eight decades. Losing a war with Taiwan would certainly be an existential event for the Party, but so too might be the outcome of any significant armed conflict.

Immediately following the August 2025 collision, I spoke to the South China Morning Post about its implications:

Sasha Chhabra, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research in Taipei, said “the inability of the [navy and coastguard] to coordinate just two ships not even under fire” raised questions about the navy’s abilities to carry out “a complex operation such as an amphibious attack or even blockade of Taiwan”.

My comments pointed out the logistical mountains ahead for China’s ability to mount an amphibious attack, but obstacles of human mortality may prove to be mountains even higher than the Himalayas.

The CCP’s attitude towards military deaths betrays a deep insecurity towards the human cost of an aggressive foreign policy. A country that waits a year to admit two soldiers died in a “righteous mission” is not a country that is ready to send tens of thousands to certain death.

Let’s hope it stays that way.

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In a revealing Truth last week, Donald Trump hinted at what many observers have been guessing may be one of the most significant fallouts of his summit this past May in Beijing: Trump has tacitly or explicitly agreed to put the brakes on arms sales to Taiwan in exchange for Beijing stopping or slowing arms sales to Tehran. A debate has raged for nearly two months over whether Trump “gave away Taiwan” or if “nothing has changed” after the summit between the two leaders.

The truth is far murkier and brings significant challenges in the near and medium term for Taiwan.

Rather than entirely backing or backing away from Taiwan, Trump has instead shifted the course of US policy on Taiwan away from unprecedented levels of support during his first administration towards an accommodationist stance that subsumes Taiwan policy into Beijing-driven policy frameworks.

It is not the first time we are here. Trump’s visit to Beijing eerily parallels Bill Clinton’s 1998 visit to China, after which he returned having largely pleased Beijing by mirroring Chinese language on Taiwan independence and continuing to block advanced arms sales to Taiwan. Clinton’s visit itself paralleled events following Nixon’s opening to China in the 1970s.

Trump’s policy shifts on Taiwan reflect the same shifts in China policy: a return towards engagement, prioritizing economic relations and military stability with China over confrontation and containment. Trump has fallen into the same fatal geostrategic mistake of his predecessors of the past four decades, who allowed the seduction of the Chinese market and distracting military quagmires in the Middle East to prevent the United States from pivoting strategically to the Indo-Pacific to contain the only state on the planet capable of challenging its military primacy.

This is a failed strategy that has seen China rise to become an economic superpower, develop the world’s second most powerful military, seize and militarize international maritime features in the South China Sea, and menace sovereign US allies from the Philippines to Taiwan to Japan. Meanwhile, the US has allowed itself to deindustrialize, falling behind on strategic new technologies, particularly in energy, EVs, and drones, and lost the ability to produce munitions and materiel faster than it can expend them. Along the way, the US has alienated its allies with trade wars, expansionist rhetoric, and bloody military interventions, while China has honed its image around the world as a reliable and stable partner.

Has US policy changed?

Early sighs of relief after Taiwan was omitted from initial public statements in Beijing quickly faded away as Trump’s disastrous comments on Fox News and subsequently to reporters on Air Force One came to light, indicating he had largely acceded to Xi Jinping’s view of Taiwan’s history, status, and present political situation. Despite damage control claims from both American and Taiwanese officials claiming that there has been “no change” in policy, it is abundantly clear that significant changes in US policy towards Taiwan are underway.

Central to this is the US policy on arms sales to Taiwan.

Since 1972, China has sought the end of US arms sales to Taiwan, and US arms sales to Taiwan have since 1982 been governed ostensibly by the Three Communiqués and Six Assurances, whereby the United States declared its intention to China to eventually end arms sales to Taiwan, but assured Taipei that there was no end date on such sales, agreeing not to consult Beijing on future arms sales. The Taiwan Relations Act, signed into law in 1979, requires the United States to sell Taiwan arms “to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”

In practice, this framework has not always reflected reality. More on that later. Alarm bells have gone off from Taipei to Washington over Trump’s comments that he is holding a pending $14 billion arms package to Taiwan “in abeyance,” stating that “it’s a very good negotiating chip,” dismissing the Six Assurances as “something signed in 1982.

In a widely watched Senate hearing last month, Marco Rubio declared there was “no change” to US policy, but equivocated on the pending $14 billion arms sale, for which Taiwan’s legislature recently allocated special funding after an acrimonious domestic political battle. Instead, Rubio pointed to last year’s $11 billion arms package as sufficient indication of US support for Taiwan’s defense.

Rubio also alluded to shortcomings in the US industrial base, echoing comments made earlier by Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao asserting that the arms sales to Taiwan were paused due to munitions shortages from the ongoing war with Iran. Given that the package reportedly contains large numbers of Patriot missile interceptors, this aligns with what I have long been warning since the start of the illegal war: the US is using munitions, including PAC-3&2s, much faster than they can be produced, and Middle Eastern countries are likely to be prioritized over Taiwan for replenishment.

Whether the delay is due to industrial capacity issues or not, Trump has made clear his intention to use the arms sale as a negotiating chip with Beijing- and so too has Xi Jinping. Initially announced in January, Trump decided to delay approval until after the planned March summit following a call with Xi in February, paralleling Trump’s denial of a traditional “transit visit” of the US by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te last summer, as Trump was angling to arrange the summit. That transit visit has not only now been canceled entirely, but later used by European countries as precedent for denying similar transits in Europe.

The indefinite postponement of the original summit due to Trump’s reckless decision to attack Iran continued the indefinite postponement of the arms deal, and following the conclusion of the summit this May, new calendar markers, such as a planned visit to Beijing by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Bridge Colby, or Xi’s forthcoming state visit in September, or China backtracking a major Boeing purchase, have allowed a treadmill of agenda items to keep the approval indefinitely postponed.

While a stark departure from Trump’s first term and the subsequent Biden administration, this pattern is far from new. In fact, it has largely governed American relations with Taiwan since Nixon’s opening to China.

We’ve been here before

Anyone who doesn’t think Taiwan’s security hasn’t been a bargaining chip over the past fifty years has been deluding themselves.

History is replete with examples of this cycle repeating itself over the years, particularly on the question of arms sales. Beginning with Nixon’s opening to China in in 1972, the US began holding back on arms sales to the ROC (Taiwan), with which it then had a mutual defense treaty, with US political and military support critical for Taiwan central to the negotiations leading up to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and the PRC.

Throughout the 1970s, the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations delayed the sale of advanced F-5E and denied the sales of F-20 (F-5G) and F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan. Although this induced much panic in Taipei, it ultimately prompted Taiwan to develop its own Indigenous Fighter jet (IDF), the F-CK 1 Ching-kuo. Although still heavily dependent on American technologies, particularly for engines, Taiwan’s decision to make an enormous investment in domestic production of key weapons systems allowed it to maintain a modern air force deterrent against China for decades. The massive project also led to major American contractors developing a large presence in Taiwan for local assembly lines of key components, further tightening not only Taiwan’s economic ties with the US, but ensuring the American military industrial complex became further invested in Taiwan.

The signing of the Third Communiqué in 1982 between China and the United States paved the way for continued arms sales to Taiwan, but with several concessions to the Chinese. In it, the United States explicitly committed to reducing arms sales to Taiwan, stating that “it intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan,” with no intention “to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan.”

But this came with a caveat that China pursue “peaceful reunification,” and in private assurances both internally and to Taipei, President Reagan made it clear arms sales would continue to maintain Taiwan’s sufficient defense against China, in line with stipulations of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act requiring the US to provide for Taiwan’s “sufficient self-defense capability.” These assurances were codified as part of the Six Assurances in 1982, which included explicit assurances the US had not agreed to either set an end date for arms sales nor to consult Beijing on arms sales to Taiwan.

Although Reagan decided to continue arms sales to Taiwan, he still refused to sell the F-16 to Taiwan. Part of this was a hangover from the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, which saw a hostile regime come to power in Tehran, which had for a decade been the single largest purchaser of US arms. US policymakers feared that should the Chiang regime collapse and Taiwan come under PRC control, Beijing would then have access to advanced US arms, eroding America’s technological edge over China.

But part was also undeniably the result of agreeing with the Chinese that “arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years.” Indeed, despite private assurances to Taipei otherwise, Washington was indeed making arms sales to Taiwan subject to negotiations with Beijing.

The events of 1989 set back the growing US-China partnership and led to a recalibration of how Washington and the West, viewed relations with China. In September 1992, President George H.W. Bush approved the sale of F-16 fighter-jets to Taiwan, after nearly two decades of attempts from the Taiwanese side. Still, Bush refused to approve the latest C/D variants, only allowing Taiwan to purchase the earlier A/B variants. This move was immediately followed by the French government’s approval of the sale Mirage 2000 fighters to Taiwan, although this sale, along with a prior sale of French frigates, would become the centerpiece of major corruption scandals in France and Taiwan.

It would take years for these arms to actually be delivered to Taiwan, and to train Taiwanese pilots on these jets. In the meantime, that same year the first deliveries of the F-CK 1 (IDF) began, modernizing Taiwan’s air force and filling a critical gap in capabilities before advanced Western jets would become available. The IDF was by no means the most advanced fighter of its generation, but it flew well and could hold its own intercepting Chinese aircraft over the Taiwan Strait. In conversations with Taiwanese fighter pilots who have flown both Taiwanese and American aircraft, including later the F-16, the relate that while the IDF is not comparable to the latter, it remains a capable aircraft that in a crucial time filled a critical capabilities gap the ROCAF was experiencing vis-à-vis the PLAAF. The fighter, despite its shortcomings, was a source of national pride for the pilots who flew it, and inspired confidence in the ability of the nation to defend its sovereignty.

While the F-16 A/B was approved at the end of George HW Bush’s sole term in office, the Clinton years brought a pause to major arms sales as Clinton focused on a policy of engagement with China focused on bringing the PRC into the WTO. Clinton denied the sale of submarines, Aegis destroyers, P-3 Orion surveillance and electronic warfare planes, PAC-3 patriot missiles, and upgrades to the F-16s.

Months after George W. Bush came into office in 2001, he greenlit the sale of submarines, P-3 Orion planes, and destroyers (albeit without Aegis combat systems), while deferring on advanced F-16 C/Ds. The question of the role of submarines in Taiwan’s defense and the history of Taiwan’s attempts to acquire modern submarines is complex and itself merits book-length treatment, however it suffices to say that the submarine acquisition eventually collapsed due to a number of factors, the two largest being legislative deadlock over the acquisition in Taiwan’s then (as today) KMT-led Legislative Yuan and the US’ own lack of facilities to produce diesel-electric submarines, which eventually led to a plan to build them in Germany, which fell through for a number of reasons.

The result of the multi-decade failure to acquire foreign-built submarines led Taiwan to decide to build its own indigenous submarine, the Haikun. Initially conceived under a KMT administration but largely executed under DPP administrations, the production has been anything but straightforward, but as of mid-2026, Taiwan now has the capacity to build its own diesel-electric submarines, creating an effective deterrent in the deep seas east, south, and north of Taiwan. While not as cheap as Japanese and Korean equivalents, the Haikun has made Taiwan less dependent on foreign acquisitions, and proven an important test for converting domestic industrial capacity for dual-use defense production capabilities. It has also strengthened defense ties with European partners such as the United Kingdom and Germany, which along with the United States, supply critical components used in the submarines.

Despite the initial 180 on high-end arms sales when Bush came into office, the Bush administration would be characterized by two lengthy arms freezes, from March 2004-October 2005 and from November 2007-October 2008, as catalogued by the US Taiwan Business Council. When the final arms freeze finally ended in 2008, it did not include F-16 C/D aircraft, which Taiwan’s legislature had already appropriated billions to pay for; KMT speaker Wang Jin-pyng stated that the US refused “mainly because mainland China would oppose the sale.”

While President Barack Obama approved significant arms sales to Taiwan early in his first administration, his second administration saw the longest arms freeze in recent history, largely attributed to attempts to improve cooperation with China on military-to-military relations, climate protocols, and misguided hopes that pulling back support from Taiwan would similarly induce China to pullback from its aggressive moves in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and cyberspace.

This period also saw increasing mistrust of the United States towards the DPP, the party most committed to protecting Taiwan’s sovereignty, largely driven by a lack of nuanced understanding of Taiwanese politics by US officials, as well as personal animosity leftover from dealing with Chen Shui-bian, who was largely viewed as a nuisance.

Not understanding that the DPP has held a consistent policy since the late 1990s not to “declare independence” by changing the name of the country, Obama interfered in the 2012 Taiwanese presidential election by directing officials to leak to the Financial Times that his administration lacked confidence in Tsai Ing-wen, the DPP’s candidate, to maintain the status quo.

Obama’s interference was not the only reason Tsai lost the 2012 election, but Ma Ying-jeou’s second term, followed by Tsai and later Trump’s victories in 2016 would lead to a radical renaissance in US support for Taiwan and embrace of the DPP as a guardian of the status quo. Following Trump’s unprecedented congratulatory phone call from President Tsai Ing-wen after his election, his administration quickly approved the long-awaited F-16 C/D fighters, along with record breaking arms sales.

Ever since, the DPP has enjoyed outsize support from Washington as its preferred partner, and increased US military support enabled Tsai to preside over a major modernization and reform of the seemingly moribund ROC military.

In times when it appeared the US was pulling back military and political support, Taiwan did not despair or machinate towards surrender. Instead, it invested in indigenous and long-term capabilities, and bided its time until favorable political tides in Washington would appear.

Data compiled by the US-Taiwan Business Council shows how the see-sawing of arms packages has played out. With the exception of Obama, presidents have tended to push through large arms packages at the beginning and end of their terms, and more hawkish presidents have tended to pass larger packages to make up for lost time. In the chart below, I’ve adjusted the USTBC’s chart to incorporate Biden’s unprecedented use of Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) grants to Taiwan, which are direct transfers of military supplies from existing stockpiles. To reflect the fact that these are grants, rather than sales, and thus free up Taiwan’s defense budget for additional spending, my chart doubles the grant amount when adding the sum alongside purchases.

A great example of this is the F-16V fighter jet, a major upgrade that essentially turns the F-16 into a fifth-generation fighter jet. While Taiwan was still seeking to purchase F-16 C/Ds and even potentially the F-35 fifth-generation multirole fighter, it simultaneously invested in US-developed SABR radar systems intended to upgrade its existing F-16s. By the time the Trump administration approved Taiwan’s F-16V purchase request in 2019, Taiwan was by then the only investor funding the development of the AN/APG-83 AESA SABR radar critical to the upgrade package.

At the time this was a risky bet, given that the US and most foreign purchasers were primarily interested in acquiring the F-35 fifth-generation fighter, and it was far from certain the US would approve Taiwan’s purchase of the F-16V by the time it was produced. As it turned out, the F-16V increasingly became an attractive alternative for countries seeking cost-effective upgrades, or prohibited from purchasing the F-35, such as Taiwan and Turkey.

The bet has worked out spectacularly for Taiwan. In addition to ensuring availability of a near fifth-generation fighter, its investment in the program has allowed it to reap tens of millions of dollars in royalties every year from other countries purchasing the jet, with expected earnings in the hundreds of millions.

Taiwanese defense officials should be working overtime to figure out what will be the F-16V investment for the drone era.

Speaking China’s language

Aside from arms sales, the issue that animates Chinese leadership the most on Taiwan, and to which it dedicates significant resources and attention, is the language used to refer to Taiwan. If it cannot conquer Taiwan today by force, it resolves to first conquer Taiwan rhetorically in the global consciousness, erasing Taiwanese identity and sovereignty, and paving the way for global acceptance of Chinese annexation of the Taiwanese nation.

The question of language more than anything dominated the Three Communiqués that established the framework for formal relations between the United States and the People’s Republic, with arms sales only making to the Third Communiqué. A central point of contention even today remains whether the United States “recognizes” or “acknowledges” China’s contention that Taiwan is part of a singular “China,” a dispute both in substance as well as over the correct translation of “承認,” although American negotiators have made it clear they privilege the English text, which merely acknowledges China’s claim.

The official US position remains that no position is taken over the sovereignty of Taiwan, which was left undecided after the Treaty of San Francisco in 1952.

China’s rhetorical goals for shifting language on Taiwan are aimed at four primary audience each with differing goals:

First is United States elites and policymakers, whom China seeks to cultivate in order to build consensus for its positions on Taiwan, and to set real or apparent red lines on US support for Taiwan, as well as to convey its language with sufficient force at the other three audiences.

Second is the government and people of Taiwan, who are overly receptive to statements from American policymakers and leaders. China hopes to convince them that the US will not support them and ultimately withdraw military backing, forcing the Taiwanese to seek early accommodation with the PRC, or at the very least to support China-friendly politicians in elections.

Third is the American people, upon whose sacrifice American military support for Taiwan ultimately depends. China understands well that the American people have long been easily manipulated by their leaders to support interventionist policies overseas, although it often heavily overestimates the degree to which Americans derive their views from their leaders, rather than the reverse.

Fourth is the larger international community, among whom China hopes to build consensus, which it has already largely established, supporting its efforts to conquer and annex Taiwan by force. These efforts have already succeeded throughout a majority of the world, but China is willing in any event to take action with or without global acceptance.

Xi Jinping’s greatest success in the Beijing summit, along with persuading Trump to indefinitely delay further arms sales to Taiwan, was in getting Trump to mirror his own language on Taiwan, adopting China’s preferred world view and perspective on Taiwan’s history and status. This was made abundantly clear in Trump’s comments on Air Force One following the summit, where he praised Xi, repeated Xi’s false claims about Taiwan, and agreed to make arms sales a bargaining chip subject to discussions with Beijing, in direct contravention of the Six Assurances. His disastrous interview with Fox News host Bret Baier in Beijing, recorded prior to the comments on Air Force One, revealed that, despite his claims otherwise, Trump knows very little about Taiwan and has largely acceded to China’s views.

Clinton also ceded ground to China rhetorically in 1998. In an echo of the consternation that would surround language on Taiwan independence around Trump’s visit to Beijing, Clinton provoked the ire of Congress by proclaiming to Jiang Zemin that the US did not “support independence for Taiwan, or two Chinas or ‘one Taiwan-one China,’” long a goal of the Chinese to hear an American leader state on the record. Yet unlike the aftermath of Clinton’s statements, which were rebuked nearly unanimously by Congress, Trump’s similar commentary has engendered no such bipartisan censure.

Does Trump care about Taiwan?

Despite his own assertions, he knows very little about it and, like most subjects, appears fundamentally uninterested in correcting his preconceived stereotypes about the country.

The May 15 interview with Bret Baier remains the most extensive text regarding Trump’s views on Taiwan, and warrants deeper analysis not only to understand Trump’s views on the matter, but because the president’s public comments on Taiwan drive key narratives in how the public understands the issue and America’s interests.

When asked about China’s threats towards Taiwan, Trump denied the threat and immediately stated “it’s not a takeover, they just don’t want to see this place, we’ll call it a place because nobody knows how to define it, but they don’t want to see it go independent.”

Almost every word in this answer was completely wrong and mirrors China’s language on the Taiwan question. Beginning with the question of whether China invading Taiwan would be a “takeover:” yes it would be, China does not control Taiwan, and in fact it never has, thus attacking and taking control of Taiwan would be a “takeover.”

While most of the media may struggle to define Taiwan, it is quite straightforward, borrowing from the first sentence of Wikipedia: “Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia.” There are important diplomatic and strategic reasons why US presidents and officials avoid calling Taiwan a country, but it’s simply untrue that nobody knows how to define it.

The language we use to describe Taiwan matters because it affects how people understand the current situation, known as the status quo. When Trump says that “they don’t want to see it go independent,” he implies that Taiwan is not already independent. Despite the rhetoric of Chinese leaders, no Taiwanese leader is advocating for so-called “Taiwan independence,” which refers to renaming the country from “Republic of China” to “Republic of Taiwan.”

Taiwan independence, known in Chinese as Taidu (台獨), refers to the independence of Taiwan from the Republic of China, not the PRC, which has never controlled it. The problem with adopting this language in English is it creates the misnomer that Taiwan is not already an independent country that has sovereign control of its borders and territory. It is, which is why every elected president of Taiwan has affirmed that Taiwan, as an independent country, has no need to declare independence.

With the term “go independent,” Trump is adopting the Chinese view that it is Taiwan which is trying to change the status quo, and the onus is on Taiwan to back down.

Ironically, Trump ends his response by stating “I know more about Taiwan right now than I know about almost any country,” in effect referring to Taiwan as a country, because it obviously is. Yet despite his subconscious knowledge that Taiwan is a country, his discussion of Taiwan reveals he in fact knows quite little about the country—and is dangerously relying on Xi Jinping to fill the gaps.

Trump continues: “they have somebody there now that wants to go independent,” echoing China’s language claiming that President Lai Ching-te is a dangerous threat to the status quo, moving Taiwan towards “independence.” The same problem remains, obvious to anyone who takes even a cursory glance at Taiwanese politics: no political leader in Taiwan is seeking to “go independent,” because Taiwan already is an independent country.

Trump’s most dangerous comments follow: “they are going independent because they want to get into a war, and they want to, they figure they have a United States behind them.” This is almost identical to Chinese statements attacking Taiwanese leaders from the pro-sovereignty DPP, claiming that Taiwan is trying to provoke a war, counting on US backing.

This mirrors Trump’s comments on the Ukraine war, where he has claimed the war started as a result of Ukrainian provocations that Biden failed to rein in.

Taiwanese leaders understand very clearly that if they change the name of their country, the US will not back them when China attacks. As a result, no mainstream political leader is advocating for this. No one in Taiwan wants a war, Taiwanese just want to live their lives in peace, without being threatened with annihilation by their imperial neighbor.

Trump then turned the discussion to Taiwan’s chip industry, whose success he views as a result of stolen American technology, when in fact it was driven largely by smart investments by Taiwan’s government and poor decisions by legacy US chipmakers. Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC, was a Chinese American with no ties to Taiwan before Texas Instruments passed him up for a promotion, leading Taiwan to recruit him to run ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute), the national R&D institution which would build Taiwan’s chip industry.

American semiconductor firms also refused at the time to invest in the development of TSMC, it was only Phillips, the Dutch electronics conglomerate, which agreed to invest in TSMC and share technologies.

Trump’s castigation of Taiwan’s industrial success a chip manufacturer on its own is not on the surface significantly different from his trade disputes with a range of countries, friends and foes alike, he claims have stolen American manufacturing. The issue for Taiwan is that the vicissitudes of a US president directly impact the continuation of the country’s independence. In the interview, he makes it clear he views continued protection of Taiwan as dependent on Taiwan’s support for reshoring chip manufacturing in the US, linking chips explicitly to defense.

The reality is that the US interest in defending Taiwan has nothing to do with chips and never has.

The United States recognized the military importance of an independent Taiwan in the 1950s during the Korean War, signing a mutual defense treaty in 1954, long before anything more complicated that table sugar dominated Taiwan’s export sector.

TSMC was not launched until 1987, nearly a decade after derecognition and the passage of the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979. It would take further decades before TSMC and Taiwan’s chip sector would become so dominant and successful as they are today. As I have written previously in the Washington Post, the idea that Taiwan’s value to the US and the role of the semiconductor industry in the country’s defense, known as the “silicon shield,” is largely a myth. Unfortunately, Taiwan’s own government carries a lot of the blame for extensively promoting this myth.

Continuing this myth perpetuates a dangerous notion that if Taiwan loses its global dominance in advanced chipmaking, then the US should give up its commitments to defending Taiwan.

Trump has stated he’d like to see Taiwan “stay the way it is.” Well, maintaining the status quo does not mean maintaining current munitions levels on one side while the other engages in the largest peacetime military buildup in history.

Unfortunately, Trump does not appear to recognize who is responsible for eroding the status quo. Instead of recognizing the need to contain Beijing’s aggression, Trump tells Baier: “I’m not looking to have somebody go independent… I want them to cool down,” repeating the phrase for the fourth of five times in the interview, and directly ordering Taiwanese leadership to “cool down.”

Trump goes on to continue castigating Taiwan for “stealing our chip industry” and repeating calls to “cool down,” while betraying his ignorance of Taiwan’s geography and history. Xi Jinping seems to have convinced him of the futility of defending Taiwan, and he falsely claims that defending Taiwan would require the US to “travel 9,500 miles,” even though not only is the distance between the two countries at least 20% less, but the US would be defending Taiwan from regional bases much closer to Taiwan. He further claims Taiwan is only 59 miles from China, when the real distance is roughly twice that.

The accuracy of these numbers may not seem like they matter, given the relative geographic scale, however the difference between 59 and 110 miles doubles the number of hours Taiwanese defenders have to fire supersonic missiles at slow-moving ships crossing the strait, an order of magnitude of difference in deterrence calculations.

But Trump is not one to sweat the details, even when they matter. He seems open to accepting Xi’s framing at face value, including absurd claims such as when he repeated Xi’s claim that China had Taiwan for “thousands of years,” even though Taiwan has never been part of China, linked only by a short period of time where the non-Chinese Manchu empire tenuously ruled parts of Taiwan at the same time as they ruled what later became China, among other continental nations and territories.

What these interviews make crystal clear is that Trump recognizes Taiwan is Xi’s most important issue, and Trump does not view Taiwan as his most important issue. Rather, he is explicit that US support for Taiwan is a negotiating chip to be invoked in relation to other issues such as Iran, Boeing, and soybeans.

Taiwan cannot deny itself out of this crisis. Following these disastrous remarks, green-aligned media in Taiwan focused on the offhand remark where Trump claimed he would “speak to the person… that’s running Taiwan,” mistakenly believing this meant an imminent and unprecedented call between American and Taiwanese presidents.

Trump was of course referring more generally to US communications with Taiwanese leadership, which happen quite regularly, but through the American Institute in Taiwan. It’s no surprise the call did not happen, and honestly this may be a good thing. President Lai Ching-te can be a deft politician in Taiwan, charismatic in Taiwanese and Mandarin, and a passionate defender of Taiwan’s sovereignty.

But he struggles in international communication, both in English and Mandarin, speaking haltingly in English in large and small settings alike. When speaking through a translator, his remarks are awkwardly translated talking points largely driven by domestic considerations, often coming across as stilted and off-topic to international audiences.

His administration has also struggled to articulate a new narrative on why Taiwan matters to America today. In the Biden era, both presidents Lai and Tsai effectively spoke the administration’s language on democracy and the liberal international order, but these are not messages that appeal to Trump, or even to the American public in a post-Trump, post-Gaza America.

Where does Taiwan go from here?

The correctness of the observation that Trump doesn’t care about Taiwan doesn’t mean the KMT and CCP argument that therefore it’s now time for Taiwan to turn towards China is correct or good for Taiwan. Deterrence holds true today, and even if Trump is weakening Taiwan’s long-term defense, he is not about to be the US president who “lost Taiwan.” Whatever difficulties Taiwan will face in the near and medium term with the US pale in comparison to what Taiwan would face under irreversible Chinese annexation and occupation.

Trump’s skepticism of Taiwan is certainly a boon to the KMT and those promoting “America skepticism,” but there has not yet been a significant trend in polling to reflect changing attitudes in domestic politics. Going into the summit, polling already showed that while Taiwanese have become quite skeptical of the United States under Trump, they remain far more skeptical of China.

KMT leader Cheng Li-wun’s approval rating has only dropped since the summit, trailing even her own party’s approval in polls, with a majority of voters lacking confidence in her. But as the months go on and arms sales continue to be delayed, despite the DPP’s assurances that “nothing has changed” in the relationship and Trump firmly backs Taiwan, moderate voters will become more open to alternate visions on how best to defend Taiwan.

Although Cheng herself remains incredibly unpopular, the popular KMT mayors of Taipei and Taichung, Chiang Wan-an and Lü Shiow-yen, are positioning themselves as effective statemen and moderate alternatives. Even Legislative Yuan Speaker Han Kuo-yu, the loser of the 2020 election, is attempting to make a comeback as a possible presidential candidate.

But it remains to be seen if Taiwanese voters will ever again put their trust in a KMT national leader to protect Taiwan. While Lai and the DPP have some egg on their face for failing to secure the arms sale package from the US despite a bitter fight to allocate funds for it in the legislature, the KMT and TPP have worked their way into a paradox on national defense spending. Despite openly preaching skepticism of the US, the parties only agreed to fund spending for purchasing arms from the US, completely gutting funds for investing in Taiwan’s domestic drone industry.

A battle is currently underway again in the legislature over funding for the domestic drone industry, with the KMT seeking to significantly roll back President Lai’s proposed budget. It would be a colossal mistake for Taiwan to fail to fully develop its dual-use drone industry, with an eye towards exports for regional partners facing similar challenges posed by an expansionist China.

Regional integration already exists and is growing in supply chains for dual-use articles with the Philippines, Japan, and Korea. New investment in Taiwan’s domestic drone production should enhance these relationships and expand to other large markets and labor suppliers such as India. If Taiwan is able to develop its drone sector to produce “China-free” drones at scale, it will have vast export markets in the region as well as the United States and Europe.

The US is not replaceable as a security partner, but temporary setback should not lead to long-term despair. There is a tried and true formula throughout modern Taiwan’s history for dealing with these setbacks. Refuse to take the bait to accede to Beijing’s terms, and wait for more favorable conditions in Washington.

But Taiwan must not squander that time waiting for yesterday’s weapons to arrive tomorrow. Taiwan must double down on indigenous production, focusing on scale and innovation. Defense sector development should be driven less by the sluggish National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST), and more by an innovative body such as ITRI. China has shown that defense innovation is downstream of commercially viable dual-use innovations. Taiwan has no hope of matching scale or commercial competitiveness of China, but it can make up for that in innovation and allied scale.

Iran’s plucky defense engineers have also shown how asymmetric defense production can deter against a superpower. $30,000 Shaheds built out of lawnmowers and launched from modified motorcycle parts have destroyed billion-dollar radar systems and deterred the world’s most modern and powerful Navy. Taiwan has more than 20,000 motorcycle repair shops, possibly the highest per capita number in the world, surely its top engineers can design a launcher system that could be replicated and repaired by every motor shop on every corner throughout this mountainous, cavernous island.

There also needs to be a fundamental shift in Taiwan’s foreign policy and engagement with the United States. Trump’s comments and the events of the past decades are simply proof that only the will of the US president alone matters, the result of not only decades of the US Congress abdicating its war making ability, but the precarious treaty-less status Taiwan holds. The Six Assurances, the Taiwan Relations Act, they largely mean nothing today, only the US president alone will decide whether or not to sell arms to Taiwan or act in its defense.

Taiwanese diplomats have spent too long focusing on Congress even as war powers have consolidated on the president alone, and too long relying on the neoconservative foreign policy establishment as populist anti-establishment fervor has seized both parties. It has also not adapted to the modern age of political influence: spending millions on bygone politicians and China-linked lobbying firms while Ukraine has figured out it needs to buy off Laura Loomer and Israel has invested billions in AI and focus group-driven influencer campaigns within the MAGA base.

In the words of the Taiwanese activists who seized the Legislative Yuan when the KMT was attempting to sellout the country to China, 自己台灣自己救, which I will modify slightly into English: only the Taiwan that can save itself, will save itself. Taiwan needing to rely more on itself for both defense and foreign policy does not mean a Taiwan that is left alone to fend for itself. It means a Taiwan that is in the driver seat of its own defense and foreign policy, driving regional relationships and leading international defense innovation. Taiwan must view itself less at the mercy of the United States, and argue more to an increasingly anti-interventionist and anti-AI American public why Taiwan matters.

A final word

The arms sale will not come any time soon, if it all. Xi will keep dangling the carrot… another summit… another visit… delayed Boeing purchases, and Trump will keep jumping for it.1 The cycle will play out as it has repeatedly over the decades: years of delay, before a new administration eventually confirms a sizeable package to make up for lost time. It’s imperative Taiwan not squander the next few years waiting month by month for arms sales that may not come for years. This delay is not a reason to panic, but a time to move towards long term strategic planning and investment in domestic systems, while developing a long-term strategy for maintaining US support as the country undergoes political reorientation.

Taiwan needs more time. It needs more time to implement military reforms, more time to jumpstart domestic drone production, more time to train reservists, more time to import foreign military hardware, more time to escape its fertility cliff, and more time to transition away from fossil fuels.

But most immediately, Taiwan needs more sunlight.

It might sound silly to claim that a tropical island is short of sunlight, but Taiwan is a country where the morning sun blasts through the curtains at ungodly hours of the morning and dips below the horizon before even the least diligent workers are clocking out. Shifting an hour later to UTC+9 would give Taiwanese people more daylight hours to enjoy, boost economic activity, make evening commutes safer, and realign Taiwan with its East Asian neighbors.

Most importantly, shifting the time zone would be an incontrovertible act of sovereignty, forcing the world to see Taiwan as having sovereign control of its own space and time.

If Taiwan wants to assert its sovereignty as a nation, as the current government asserts is a necessity, it needs to do so in ways that matter, and are felt more clearly than a quick news story about secretly visiting countries no one has heard of. In 1945, the Republic of China occupying forces imposed “Central Plains time” on Taiwan, aligning Taiwan’s time zone with central China as part of efforts to link Taiwan with China, a nation which it has never been part of.

By forcing the world’s businesses, media, communications systems, and transport authorities to recognize “Taiwan Standard Time,” the world will clearly see Taiwan’s own government is the ultimate sovereign authority over Taiwan, and China’s inability to prevent this will make it clear the two sides of the strait are not subordinate to each other.

It would also make life a lot more enjoyable and safer in Taiwan. While the sun rises quite early throughout Taiwan, the Taiwanese are a nation of late-risers, the cities bustling with late-night cafés, all-night breakfast shops, and bars that close well after the morning sun has risen. Shifting forward an hour would do little to impact the rhythms of morning commutes, which generally peak in the later morning hours. With school start times at 8am and most office workers lazily making their way in around 10am, few would be commuting in darkness.

By contrast, most Taiwanese workers leave the office in darkness, around 6 or 7 in the evening, leaving little light for an outdoor stroll, jog in the park, or happy hour au plein air. The early dusk forces socializing indoors, particularly in Taiwan’s coolest months, when it is most tolerable to remain outside. Adding another hour of light to Taiwan’s evening rush hour may also have a noticeable impact on Taiwan’s atrocious traffic fatality rates.

A Brief History of Taiwan’s Time

Just as sovereignty and identity have changed throughout Taiwan’s history, so too has its time. Taiwan, as in the rest of the world, historically used local time prior to the introduction of time zones. When the Japanese took control of and unified Taiwan in 1895, Japan Standard Time (UTC +9) was briefly introduced, however the following year Western Standard Time (UTC +8) was introduced for Taiwan and the western Ryukyus (Miyako and Yaeyema islands).

As part of a nationwide campaign of modernization in the Japanese Empire, “Time Memorial Day” (時の記念日) was established in 1920 to promote the adoption of standard time and punctuality. Introduced to Taiwan the following year, it led to the widespread adoption of standardized time (UTC+8) throughout Taiwan. This changed in 1937, when Japan abolished regional time zones and imposed Tokyo time (UTC +9) throughout the empire until the end of World War II, after which Western Standard Time (UTC +8) was restored.

The arrival of the Republic of China forces in 1945 to occupy Taiwan led to the imposition of Central Plains Time (中原標準時), also UTC+8, aligning Taiwan with Nanjing and central China. Daylight savings time was also introduced from 1945-1961, with sporadic adoption in the 1970s, largely as an energy saving measure. The enforcement of a Chinese-aligned time on Taiwan was among one of many measures imposed on the people of Taiwan to link them to China, including the imposition of Mandarin, the forced adoption of Chinese institutions and symbols, the creation of ahistorical narratives linking Taiwan to China, and the prohibition of political parties or independent media who could contest said narratives and beliefs.

The political weight of time has thus meant that Taiwan’s time zone has become inherently linked to questions of national identity as well as historical legacies of martial law and democratization, the process of which saw the uprooting and dismemberment of most authoritarian institutions, and a number of shifts to allow Taiwanese people to freely express their identity and history.

The question of Taiwan’s time zone has thus come up periodically in debates of national identity, most notably in 2017 when activists used Taiwan’s Public Policy Network Participation Platform (公共政策網路參加與批評臺) to petition the government to consider shifting back to UTC+9, aligning with Japan and away from China. Under the platform, established in 2015 to encourage public participation in policy debates, any citizen or permanent resident can petition the government to respond to a policy proposal. If it reaches 5,000 signatures within 60 days, then the relevant government agency or agencies must respond to the issue.

The petition called for changing the time zone in order to make it clear China and Taiwan are not subordinate to each other, while also ensuring winter evening rush hour would be less dark and late summer nights could be maximally enjoyed. A competing counter-petition was also launched, and both petitions quickly reached the threshold requiring a government response.

Although primarily the responsibility of the Ministry of Interior, the multi-faceted nature of time and the arguments presented necessitated the involvement of numerous other government ministries, including Foreign Affairs, Defense, Labor, Transportation, Health and Welfare, among other agencies. The Ministry of Interior organized a PowerPoint presentation summarizing the main arguments and issues of concern, excerpts of which Formosa Review has translated below.

A comprehensive response was released on December 19, 2017, with responses from all the above ministries as well as Justice, Culture, and the Overseas Community Affairs Council. Participants in the interagency process convened by then-Minister without Portfolio concluded that changing the time zone would not be enough to help the world understand the differences between Taiwan and China, and instead suggested other methods for establishing Taiwan’s international image. The brief report is a fascinating insight into Taiwan’s efforts at soft power promotion overseas, and may in fact mark the first and only time Taiwan has had an interagency process evaluating and assessing efforts and strategies of “marketing” Taiwan.

The report breaks down the issue into categories relevant to each government ministry, listing out existing strategies as well as proposed follow-up efforts to promote Taiwan internationally. Several of the ideas listed are excellent but have not been implemented, while others remain mainstays of Taiwan’s foreign marketing, yet have shown few results. Below I have summarized and translated (collaboratively with Claude AI) each section along with a comment reflecting on these efforts a decade later:

Attendees agreed that the government and all sectors of society should market Taiwan’s strengths abroad, highlight Taiwan’s uniqueness, and increase international visibility. Recommended approaches include marketing Taiwan’s advantages and using soft power to create differentiation, highlighting Taiwan’s characteristics to build an international image:

1. Marketing Taiwan’s Strengths

(a) Democracy and Human Rights Values

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Culture

“Human rights as a national foundation” is the government’s established policy. Taiwan’s pursuit of democracy, freedom, and progressive human rights values is internationally recognized. According to the NGO Freedom House’s global freedom reports, Taiwan has been rated a “Free” country for 18 consecutive years since 1999, and in 2017, Taiwan’s total score surpassed the United States, rising to the “most free” level.

Regarding human rights protections, although Taiwan cannot participate in UN activities, it voluntarily complies with international human rights standards and works diligently to put them into practice, domesticating major international human rights conventions into national law. Of the UN’s 9 core international human rights conventions, 6 already have domestic legal effect in Taiwan. Taiwan submits national reports and invites international human rights experts to conduct reviews, helping examine the current state of human rights progress and provide recommendations for improvement—earning high praise from international human rights experts.

Regarding the Ministry of Culture’s National Human Rights Museum Preparatory Office: after the lifting of martial law, the former Jingmei Military Detention Center in Xindian and the Green Island Prison were transformed into memorial parks, bearing witness to Taiwan’s political human rights development and preserving the collective memory of that era. After years of preparation, the Preparatory Office has assembled Taiwan’s human rights and political victims’ archives and artifacts. The Legislature passed the National Human Rights Museum Organization Act on November 28, 2017. Additionally, the Legislature recently passed the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice, which provides the legal basis for transforming Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. To build social consensus, the Ministry of Culture has launched a “Social Discussion Project on Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Transformation.”

Follow-up plan: Continue Promoting Democracy and Human Rights

Three UN core conventions have not yet been domesticated: the Convention Against Torture, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Relevant agencies are actively working on domestication. The government will continue to research relevant laws, systems, and policies, plan human rights education, cultivate and deepen human rights values, and build Taiwan’s comprehensive human rights framework to make Taiwan Asia’s leading human rights nation.

Beyond continuing to promote the collection, research, exhibition, educational outreach, and international exchange of human rights archives and artifacts from the authoritarian era, the government will also expand support for organizations practicing and promoting various human rights issues and contemporary human rights principles, demonstrating Taiwan’s determination to pursue universal democratic and human rights values.

The “Social Discussion Project on Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Transformation” will proceed through information platform development, vision workshops, and citizens’ conferences, focusing discussion on why and how to transform the memorial. A draft amendment to the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Management Office Organization Act will be prepared, followed by expanded public hearings to establish the direction of transformation.

My comment: There is no doubt that Taiwan has achieved many plaudits since democratization for its accomplishments in human rights and as Asia’s most successful democracy. This has been an effective basis for building support from sympathetic constituencies within democratic countries, particularly in Europe and the US. This message of democratic solidarity had a lot of currency under the Biden administration, yet has limited effectiveness in messaging to an America now dominated by the democracy-skeptical MAGA movement. Democracy also distinguishes Taiwan from China today, but it is not the main basis for the national split between the two countries, and does not necessarily clarify Taiwan’s sovereign independence.

The action plan from the ministries of Justice and Culture is also very domestic focused in its limited scope. Adopting UN human rights conventions may be a simple symbolic nod of Taiwan’s good intentions, but these steps gain little international attention and are irrelevant as Taiwan remains shut out of the UN for the foreseeable future.

For all of Taiwan’s accomplishments in human rights, much of its foreign policy directly contradicts Taiwanese and international values, bringing far more negative than positive attention. Beyond Taiwan’s continued use of the death penalty and lack of an asylum law, it includes Taiwan’s open embrace of the child predator king of Eswatini and its support of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, all of which command far more international attention and concern. This disconnect has led to criticisms that Taiwan often uses human rights as a “cultural commodity” rather than out of a genuine international commitment.

Taiwan’s domestic actions, such as opening human rights museums, while important for Taiwanese society, do little to raise international awareness. The only site of international interest mentioned in this section is the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, which is one of Taiwan’s most famous international landmarks and a major tourist attraction, yet decades later it remains untransformed and continues to glorify a Chinese dictator who murdered tens of thousands of Taiwanese. As long as Taiwan’s most famous cultural landmark remains a memorial to someone who believed both sides of the strait were One China, Taiwan will struggle to explain to international tourists that its society actually rejects this narrative.

(b) Achievements in Open Data

Responding agenc(ies): National Development Council

The National Development Council shares Taiwan’s open data implementation experience at international forums including the International Academy of CIO (IAC) and the International Council for Information and Technology in Government Administration (ICA). Taiwan’s open data ranked first in the world on the Global Open Data Index published by the UK’s Open Knowledge Foundation in both 2015 and 2016/2017.

Follow-up plan: Continue Open Data Promotion

Taiwan’s open data achievements have attracted considerable international attention. The NDC will continue sharing Taiwan’s open data experience at international venues including IAC, ICA, OGP, and IODC to raise Taiwan’s global visibility.

My comment: Taiwan’s achievements in open data are interesting to policy and technical nerds, but bring little global visibility to Taiwan. A decade later, Taiwan’s government websites remain plagued by poor and clunky user interfaces, where data tables are often presented as images, and have either no or incomplete translations into English and other foreign languages.

(c) International Cooperation Through Trade and Diplomacy

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Foreign Affairs

To secure Taiwan’s international visibility and recognition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs continually strengthens the depth and breadth of international exchange and cooperation. Substantive progress has been made in trade exchange, youth working holiday programs, and visa-free or landing visa arrangements. Through participation in international organizations, Taiwan demonstrates its commitment to globally significant issues including agriculture, fisheries, food security, and climate change, raising the country’s visibility. The Ministry also assists local governments in promoting city diplomacy and helps NGOs connect internationally, operating programs such as overseas technical missions, International Youth Ambassadors, Agriculture Youth Ambassadors, and Junior Diplomats—with abundant results that have been widely praised by the international community.

Follow-up plan: Continue International Cooperation Marketing Through Trade and Diplomacy

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will continue strengthening collaboration with government agencies at all levels, civil organizations, youth, and the business community to jointly advance comprehensive “pragmatic diplomacy.” This includes actively promoting trade exchange with countries and executing “multi-level, multi-domain, multi-faceted” cooperation programs benefiting their citizens. Taiwan will continue participating in international humanitarian relief work, exercising soft power, and fulfilling its responsibilities as a member of the international community.

My comment: The smörgåsbord nature of this response reflects the foreign ministry’s lack of a comprehensive strategy for promoting Taiwan’s international visibility. Several of the initiatives mentioned, such as elevating subnational and sister city diplomacy, have achieved progress but remain underutilized and lack a coordinated national strategy. Sister city agreements are overwhelmingly initiated and funded by local city administrations, and remain dependent on individual mayors’ plans and budgets.

It is unclear what international visibility Taiwan has achieved in agriculture, fisheries, food security, and climate change. Youth working holiday programs have brought many young people from around the world to Taiwan, but remain limited and should be expanded significantly, particularly for regional partners such as Australia.

The ministry’s follow-up plan is a series of buzzwords that lacks any strategic outlook or focus.

(d) Deepening International Organization Participation

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Health and Welfare

To deepen international participation, the Ministry of Health and Welfare promotes various policies, including continued participation in activities organized by international health organizations. Minister Chen led Taiwan’s WHO Action Team to Geneva during the 70th World Health Assembly, seeking bilateral meetings with countries and medical organizations. The Ministry also attended the 7th APEC High-Level Meeting on Health and the Economy, presenting on “Towards a Sustainable Health System” and introducing Taiwan’s healthcare system, national health insurance, long-term care, and smart medicine policies.

The Ministry also actively participates in international health aid programs, including the Taiwan International Healthcare Training Center, the Medical Equipment Aid Platform, the Pacific 6 Allied Nations Medical Cooperation Program, and Taiwan International Health Action (TaiwanIHA), co-established with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2006. In line with the government’s New Southbound Policy, the Ministry promotes the New Southbound Medical Cooperation and Industry Chain Development Mid-to-Long-Term Plan, leveraging Taiwan’s medical soft power to deepen health networks and expand influence in New Southbound countries.

Follow-up plan: Continue Deepening International Organization Participation

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Health and Welfare

The MOHW will continue deepening international participation through international health organization meetings and activities, international health cooperation, health aid programs, hosting international health conferences, and New Southbound medical cooperation. The Ministry will also share international participation results on its English-language Twitter account (@MOHW_Taiwan).

My comment: Taiwan’s obsession with the World Health Assembly has for too long diverted resources that would be better spent raising Taiwan’s international visibility more broadly. Taiwan is not going to be allowed to join the WHA, and as long as it defines that as a benchmark for international participation, it will continue to lead to headlines such as this week’s “China says it won’t allow Taiwan to attend WHO’s annual assembly,” which only end up furthering the notion that China somehow has control over Taiwan’s foreign policy and international participation. The foreign and health ministries dedicate extremely large budgets and resources towards advocacy in Geneva, which is merely for a small audience of diplomats and NGOs, and has no strategy for actually getting into the WHA.

There is no doubt that Taiwan has numerous accomplishments in world health, from its world class affordable National Health Insurance to its impressive pandemic response to advances in biotech, all of which are extremely compelling stories of Taiwanese innovation and brilliance. However, these stories would be better shared with mass audiences throughout the world, rather than uninterested diplomats in Geneva. Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHA has nothing to do with its achievements in public health, and even if Taiwan had no accomplishments in this arena, it would still deserve a seat at the WHA.

When Taiwan does try to share these accomplishments publicly, it often fails to suit the message to the audience. Taiwanese diplomats often focus on the COVID-19 pandemic in messages to US audiences, where narratives about the pandemic are highly polarized, and emphasize masks and vaccines to Republican audiences largely skeptical of both measures. Meanwhile, Taiwan misses a great opportunity to open dialogue with the progressive Left in the US, many of whom still believe Taiwan is a right-wing dictatorship, by showcasing Taiwan’s achievements in universal healthcare.

Also of note: the “English language Twitter account” does not actually post in English.

(e) Gender and Marriage Equality

Responding agenc(ies): Executive Yuan Gender Equality Office, Ministry of Justice

The Executive Yuan Gender Equality Office continues to promote marriage equality. The 2017 revised Gender Equality Policy Guidelines include concrete measures encouraging all sectors of society to value gender human rights, actively promote discussion on protecting the rights of diverse genders and non-marital cohabiting partners, and study measures to promote the welfare, care, and rights protections of same-sex families.

Following the Constitutional Court’s Interpretation No. 748, published on May 24, 2017, the Executive Yuan established a Same-Sex Marriage Legal Review Task Force under then-Secretary-General Chen Mei-ling. The Gender Equality Office participates in related meetings.

Taiwan has actively engaged with human rights issues in recent years. Same-sex marriage and same-sex partner rights protections have been vigorously discussed in society and are shared concerns in the concluding observations of the first and second ICCPR/ICESCR national report reviews and the second CEDAW national report review.

Follow-up plan: Continue Promoting Gender and Marriage Equality

Responding agenc(ies): Executive Yuan Gender Equality Office, Ministry of Justice

Per Constitutional Court Interpretation No. 748, relevant agencies must complete the necessary legal revisions or new legislation within two years of the interpretation’s publication. The Executive Yuan has convened a Same-Sex Marriage Legal Review Task Force to carefully study the rights and obligations that should be afforded to same-sex marriages, guided by principles of minimizing social impact and building maximum consensus. The Executive Yuan will send a reasonable and feasible bill to the Legislature as soon as possible within the interpretation’s deadline. Continuing efforts include:

1. Advancing same-sex marriage legislation to protect same-sex family rights.

2. Increasing public understanding and acceptance of same-sex families: The Gender Equality Office will implement a 2019–2022 “Key Gender Equality Issues Project,” with “eliminating gender stereotypes and prejudice” as a priority. Working with relevant ministries and local governments, the Office will conduct publicity campaigns, lectures, solicitation programs, and media literacy events to improve public awareness and reduce prejudice.

3. The Gender Equality Office receives an average of 10–20 foreign delegations annually and participates in domestic and international gender equality conferences. The Office will incorporate same-sex marriage legislation into Taiwan’s gender equality briefings, promoting Taiwan’s stance on marriage equality to raise international visibility.

My comment: Taiwan’s advancements in marriage equality have been one of its most effective international soft power successes. LGBT rights are a particularly effective message in the West, but have diminishing returns as backlash to LGBT rights rises in the West and as marriage equality becomes more widespread in Asia. Taiwan will need to ensure it has a strong overall human rights image to avoid accusations of pinkwashing.

(f) Public Safety

Responding agenc(ies): National Police Agency, Ministry of the Interior

The American Chamber of Commerce’s 2017 Business Climate Survey ranked “Family feels very safe” as the #1 advantage of living in Taiwan, up from #3 in 2016. The #2 advantage was “Living in Taiwan is quite easy and comfortable,” and #3 was “Taiwanese people are extremely friendly.” Overall, members broadly consider Taiwan a safe and friendly work and living environment.

Numbeo’s 2017 Global City Safety Index ranked Taipei #3 worldwide with a crime index of 15.76—just behind Abu Dhabi (15.51) and Munich (15.72). Taipei ranked ahead of Singapore (#8), Tokyo (#16), and Hong Kong (#23), making it the #1 city in East Asia.

Follow-up plan: Continue Fighting Crime and Maintaining Public Safety

Responding agenc(ies): National Police Agency, Ministry of the Interior

The NPA will continue executing various concrete plans, refining crime prevention strategies, and improving effectiveness. It will continue monitoring factors that may affect domestic public safety, addressing trends in crime statistics and high-profile security situations, and timely integrating inter-agency government resources to develop and implement security policies with demonstrable results.

My comment: Taiwan is one of the safest countries, if not the safest, in the entire world. This is a narrative that directly counters the globally pervasive narrative of “the most dangerous place on earth.” Taiwan’s safety is consistently cited by foreign travelers and residents as one of Taiwan’s strongest features, and is one of the few democracies ranked among the most safe countries. Taiwan should invest significant resources in spreading narratives promoting Taiwan’s safety and high levels of societal trust.

There is an important soft power narrative for Taiwan to share as a society that has achieved extremely high public safety without resorting to authoritarianism. In focus groups on international communication held in Taiwan, I have often used the framework of safe, convenient, trust as an alternative narrative framework for branding Taiwan. It would also help for Taiwan to abandon its commitment to the death penalty, for which there is no evidence that it has any deterrent effect on crime.

2. Using Soft Power to Create Differentiation and Build an International Image

(a) Civic Participation and Open Government Results

Responding agenc(ies): Public Digital Innovation Space (PDIS)

On November 24, 2016, the Premier declared at a cabinet meeting that open government is the current government’s fundamental principle and policy goal, requiring dedicated personnel. All ministries now have designated Participation Officers (POs), forming a stable mechanism. On December 4, the Executive Yuan further issued the “Directions for Implementing Open Government Participation Officers in the Executive Yuan and Subordinate Agencies,” establishing an institutionalized framework for candid dialogue and mutual trust between government and the public.

The Executive Yuan also addresses issues of public concern that are cross-ministerial and involve multiple stakeholders. The PDIS team collaborates with relevant ministries to convene collaboration meetings with government agencies and civil stakeholders, jointly clarifying facts, aligning perspectives, and seeking viable solutions. Twenty-five such meetings have been held to date, implementing civic participation through practical case work and deepening open government principles.

Taiwan’s open government efforts have attracted considerable international attention due to their clear principles and concrete approach, particularly within the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and other international organizations and conferences. The NDC-led government data openness initiative has ranked first in international evaluations for two consecutive years. Minister Audrey Tang and other open government advocates are highly active in international participation, frequently invited to international conferences, with frequent foreign media interviews and visiting delegations—effectively highlighting Taiwan’s unique open government experience, demonstrating the value of deepened democracy, and raising international visibility.

Follow-up plan: Continue Promoting Open Government

Responding agenc(ies): PDIS

Building on the existing foundation, continue promoting open government to raise international visibility.

My comment: Per the previous discussion on open government, this has had limited reach internationally, and would require significant technical improvements in Taiwan’s government websites and information systems to have a broader reach.

(b) Packaging Taiwan’s Stories and Food Documentaries

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Culture

The Ministry of Culture has implemented a policy of internationalizing local culture, collaborating with diplomatic, trade, and tourism agencies to provide Taiwanese cultural materials so that all overseas government offices become soft power bases, achieving the goal of “every office is a cultural center.” In alignment with the New Southbound Policy, the Ministry invited Southeast Asian arts and culture professionals to form a Southeast Asian Advisory Committee, continues to sponsor the Taiwan Youth Cultural Gardeners program to encourage two-way exchange between Taiwanese youth arts workers and Southeast Asian cultural figures, and strengthens Taiwan’s cultural connections with Austronesian peoples. The Ministry also promotes the internationalization of Taiwan’s cultural festivals and local cultural support programs, establishing international cultural identity value for local arts and cultural activities, promoting cultural tourism and local industry prosperity. Through bringing Taiwanese contemporary art and classic works onto the international stage while incorporating diverse arts activities, it presents Taiwan’s uniquely rich local culture and shapes an overall national brand.

Follow-up plan: Continue Packaging Taiwan’s Stories and Food Documentaries

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Culture

Continue promoting the policy of internationalizing local culture.

My comment: Part of Taiwan’s struggle to promote “Taiwanese culture” abroad is a lack of consensus on what precisely constitutes Taiwanese culture. When the ROC claimed to be “the real China,” it took on the role of promoting traditional Chinese culture throughout the world, and many Taiwanese missions overseas still continue these traditions, often erasing Taiwan and its status altogether from the conversation.

To effectively spread Taiwanese soft power, cultural agencies would need to focus on aspects that are uniquely Taiwanese, and tell Taiwan’s own historical and political story alongside cultural development. A great example is the success of the Taiwanese novel Taiwan Travelogue, which tells the story of Taiwan under Japanese rule, and has won major attention and acclaim overseas, with little government support for its translation and promotion. Increasing funding for translating Taiwanese literature and adapting Taiwanese works for television and film would be critical not only for increasing Taiwan’s soft power overseas, but stimulating domestic cultural fields.

(c) Refined Tourism and Establishing Taiwan’s Culinary Identity

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Transportation and Communications

To align with international trends of tourism localization, digitalization, and sustainable development, the Tourism Bureau is actively promoting “Tourism 2020—Taiwan Sustainable Tourism Development Strategy.” Through five strategies—diversifying markets, stimulating domestic travel, guiding industry transformation, developing smart tourism, and promoting experiential tourism—along with multiple policy programs, the Bureau actively builds Taiwan’s tourism image around diversity, refinement, and quality, encompassing food, culture, wellness, romance, and ecology. Combined with the 2017–2020 annual tourism themes of ecology, bays, small towns, and mountain spine trails, the approach returns to the essence of “the more local, the more international,” enhancing Taiwan’s tourism sophistication and local character, with the aim of establishing Taiwan as a “friendly, smart, experiential” premier Asian travel destination.

Follow-up plan: Continue Refined Tourism and Culinary Identity

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Transportation and Communications

1. The Tourism Bureau will continue to follow the Tourism 2020 strategy, moving toward sustainable development goals, slowing down to rethink and uncover more of Taiwan’s tourism uniqueness and differentiation.

2. Continue integrating the sustainable philosophy of “eat local, eat seasonal” and respecting food miles, building Taiwan’s food brand image and culinary culture through local food arts, ingredients, tableware, food education, dining companions, and food tourism. This includes regionalized local food tourism routes and expanded community participation.

3. Partner with Michelin to publish the Taipei Michelin Guide, elevating Taiwan’s overall culinary brand to international standards and establishing Taiwan’s culinary identity for the world to see.

My comment: Tourism and culinary identity have been two areas of strong improvement for Taiwan’s overseas soft power. Since 2017, Taiwan has effectively pivoted away from Chinese tourism towards diversified tourism flows from Southeast Asia and Western countries, buoyed at times by effective outreach such as Taiwan’s halal tourism campaign. Taiwan is an incredibly compelling country whose ordinary people are its most effective ambassadors, I don’t know of anyone who has visited Taiwan and not had an extremely positive experience, making international tourism an effective soft power strategy.

Of course, this can turn counterproductive when tourists arrive on “China Airlines” or book tickets to “Taipei, China,” giving travelers the false impression that Taiwan is part of China. Taiwan should not allow any foreign carrier to fly to Taiwan that lists Taiwan as part of China, or allow any foreign hotel to operate that lists Taiwanese cities as being in “China.”

The development of Taiwanese culinary identity has also been a very successful global phenomenon, but more due to the efforts of Taiwanese and diaspora Taiwanese chefs, critics, and food vendors than government intervention. Taiwanese food is now an established category in major international restaurant review categories, with Taiwanese restaurants reaching international acclaim. Writers such as have brought Taiwanese cooking into the English language world through cookbooks, and overseas Taiwanese specialty stores such as Brooklyn-based YunHai have used dried fruit to tell the story of China’s pressure against Taiwan (founder also writes a popular Substack).

These efforts have all happened with no government support. The pervasiveness of bubble tea has done little to raise awareness of Taiwan’s unique identity, and most Taiwanese restaurants abroad lack the resources or support needed to effectively build Taiwan’s brand. There is a proven model pioneered by Thailand’s Global Thai gastro-diplomacy initiative which Taiwan should adopt.

(d) Cultivating Internationally Competitive Artists

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Culture

To support performing arts groups classified at the “excellence” tier in tiered arts group subsidies, the Ministry of Culture promotes the Taiwan Brand Team program to build Taiwanese ensemble brands, cultivate cultural capital, shape Taiwan’s cultural image, promote international exchange, and conduct tours of remote and outlying island areas to develop audiences and arts appreciation. In 2017, the program supported five groups to perform on international stages: Cloud Gate Culture and Arts Foundation, Ju Percussion Group Foundation, Paper Windmill Theatre, U-Theatre Culture and Arts Foundation, and Ming Hwa Yuan Arts.

Follow-up plan: Continue Cultivating International Artists

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Culture

Continue the Taiwan Brand Team program so performing arts groups can shine on the international stage and serve as Taiwan’s cultural calling cards to the world.

My comment: As discussed in section B, Taiwan needs to focus on identifying and promoting uniquely Taiwanese cultural aspects, and direct state funds towards cultural and artistic development. Although many such state subsidies exist, budgets are shrinking and Taiwanese artists often complain state funding comes with too much control and favor for-profit entities over individual artists.

(e) Strengthening the Sports Environment

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Education

To achieve the goal of athletes shining on the international stage and reaching the pinnacle of competitive sports, the Ministry of Education will create a quality sports environment. Competitive sports programs will incorporate five core elements: “Select” (scientific talent identification), “Train” (structured training systems), “Compete” (international competition participation), “Support” (athlete counseling), and “Reward” (incentive measures). The Ministry will also guide nationally representative sports federations toward healthy organizational operations to effectively enhance Taiwan’s competitive sports capabilities, achieve new heights in competitive excellence, and earn national glory at international multi-sport events.

Follow-up plan: Continue Strengthening Sports

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Education

1. Implement integrated scientific talent selection strategies, expand medal-winning advantages, build a four-tier athlete capability database, establish a scientific selection platform, and conduct long-term tracking and development of successor teams.

2. Strengthen the effectiveness of sports talent development to build international competitive strength.

3. Establish tiered international competition participation and support teams.

4. Implement comprehensive career counseling mechanisms for athletes and coaches.

5. Improve reward systems for outstanding sports talent.

6. Implement the four key reforms under the revised National Sports Act, guiding nationally representative sports federations toward organizational openness, financial transparency, professional operations, and public accountability.

My comment: The single most important soft power action Taiwan needs to take in the world of sport is fighting the nonsense of Chinese Taipei. For most people around the world, this is the only image they have of Taiwan, and the nonsensical and insulting label is one of China’s most effective cognitive warfare efforts against Taiwan. Taiwanese athletes must take the lead where their government has not, protesting as the KMT used to do, in order to challenge the discriminatory label.

(f) Establishing the Made-in-Taiwan (MIT) Brand

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Economic Affairs

The Industrial Development Bureau promotes the MIT Smile Product Certification System (since 2010) to help traditional industries improve product quality, establishing a “safe, healthy, and trustworthy” image for Taiwan-made products and assisting with domestic and international market expansion.

Category 1 (Enhanced Guidance Industries) now covers 17 categories and 22 product types: apparel, underwear, knitwear, swimwear, towels, bedding, hosiery, footwear, bags/luggage, home appliances, stone, ceramics, wood/bamboo products, pesticides, environmental chemicals, veterinary pharmaceuticals, textile hats, scarves, textile gloves, umbrellas, textile protective gear, and fabric curtains. Category 2 has adopted cosmetics GMP and the CNS Mark certification systems. Category 3 (general products) now includes IT products, toys, audio-visual equipment, lighting fixtures, sunglasses, and more, and is accepting certification applications.

Follow-up plan: Continue Building the MIT Brand

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Economic Affairs

The Ministry of Economic Affairs will continue expanding the MIT certification program.

My comment: When I first moved to Taiwan, I thought all the products advertising “MIT” were advertising that they had been engineered by graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Made in Taiwan” is never going to be how anyone outside of Taiwan interprets “MIT.” Taiwan should instead build on the “Taiwan Excellence” brand established by the Ministry of Economic Affairs more than 30 years ago.

3. Marketing Methods

In addition to proactive efforts by each responsible agency, attendees suggested the following additional approaches:

(a) Airport Arrival Marketing

Responding agenc(ies): Ministry of Transportation and Communications

In coordination with the Tourism Bureau’s various tourism promotion activities, airports will provide locations along passenger arrival and departure routes for setting up promotional signage, lightboxes, and brochure racks. Requests will be processed according to regulations, with assistance provided.

My comment: Taiwan has the world’s best airport, with major international connections, and incredible airlines, which should be commended. However, Taiwan completely fails to market itself to transit passengers through stopover visits, a strategy that has proved extremely effective in countries such as Iceland. This is a hugely missed opportunity for an airport where more than one fifth of passengers are transiting elsewhere. It is almost impossible to book a stopover fare on Taiwan’s airlines, which also have extremely clumsy and outdated websites. The Tourism Bureau instead focuses on confusing and silly promotions such as “lucky draws” which offer visitors a chance to win a very small prize through a convoluted process, with information often available only in Mandarin Chinese. Those funds would be better spent subsidizing stopover hotels or transportation incentives to get passengers out of Taoyuan.

(b) Overseas Diaspora Outreach

Responding agenc(ies): Overseas Community Affairs Council

To help the international community learn about Taiwan’s image and values through the overseas affairs platform, key initiatives include: supporting diaspora-organized events such as “Taiwan Culture Day,” “Taiwan Carnival,” and “Taiwan Heritage Week”; encouraging overseas Taiwanese business groups to collaborate with domestic businesses to promote high-quality Taiwan products in international markets; dispatching master chefs and culinary experts to perform and teach overseas, helping overseas Chinese communities promote Taiwan’s culinary excellence; encouraging diaspora groups to promote Taiwan’s international medical services; and facilitating outreach by overseas Taiwanese to host-country political and economic leaders and mainstream media to advocate for Taiwan.

Follow-up Actions

Taiwan possesses democracy, diverse culture, and an active civil society. The government will leverage existing soft power to highlight Taiwan’s characteristics through different dimensions, making the most of its inherent advantages to strengthen differentiation from other countries. For marketing existing policy achievements, diverse and creative approaches will be adopted—for example, attendees proposed drama-based marketing to increase international visibility and recognition.

The Overseas Community Affairs Council will continue using the dense network of overseas diaspora communities and organizations as a channel for international marketing and advocacy. It will continue developing overseas Chinese education to demonstrate Taiwan’s cultural soft power, dispatch Taiwanese arts groups overseas through cross-ministerial cooperation to promote Taiwan’s diverse culture, strengthen services for overseas Taiwanese businesses, encourage overseas business communities to establish partnerships with host countries as channels for international exchange, and build a government-diaspora platform to promote Taiwan’s highlights and advantages to the world.

My comment: Taiwan’s diaspora is one of its most important global assets. Taiwanese diaspora, particularly in the US and Japan, were critical to the survival and success of Taiwan’s democracy movement, and have been a key lobbying and fundraising source for supporting Taiwan and Taiwanese political movements. However, despite the size and wealth of Taiwan’s diaspora, particularly in the United States, the diaspora remains underutilized due to several factors, including a lack of strategic direction post-democratization, political division, and the government’s focus on developing “Chinese culture” among the diaspora. The latter effort is a legacy of institutions set up by the KMT during martial law, which included many effective soft power initiatives such as the famous “love boat” program for overseas Chinese and Taiwanese youth. These programs should be reinvigorated and given a more activist nature to effectively mobilize diaspora overseas.

Support should be expanded for popular activities organized by overseas Taiwanese, including New York’s very popular “Passport to Taiwan” festival and Taiwan Fes in Tokyo. New festivals based on these successful models should be funded in Australia and the Philippines, two countries critical to Taiwan’s national security and with large Taiwanese diasporas. These sorts of festivals should be initiated in as many cities as possible, and should be expanded to include targeted information about Taiwan’s history and status in addition to just food and culture.

Time for a Change

The most important message Taiwan needs to get across overseas, regardless of what form and to what audience, is that Taiwan currently exists as a sovereign state. The above strategies and messages are all ways of drawing attention to Taiwan and creating opportunities to share effective messages letting the world know that Taiwan is not part of China and exercises its own sovereignty.

Changing the time zone is an incontrovertible way to assert that truth. Fortunately, it is also a decision that will improve ordinary people’s lives in Taiwan, and strengthen Taiwan’s connections with Japan and South Korea.

It is also a measure that can be done relatively easily, despite Taiwan’s gridlocked politics. The Executive Yuan has historically adjusted Taiwan’s time zone through annual decisions whether or not to adopt daylight savings time, and can simply issue a decision promulgating the new standard time.

President Lai has stated it is important Taiwan take measures to assert its sovereignty. Rather than embarrassing state visits to corrupt monarchies no one has heard of, changing Taiwan’s official time is a far more effective and productive assertion of state sovereignty.

Taiwan has sovereignty not only over territory, but time itself. It’s time for a change.

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Last month, the bright yellow double hulls of the Alingano Maisu cut through the blue waves of the Pacific to arrive in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The crew, made up of indigenous Taiwanese, CHamoru, Palauan, and Micronesian sailors, navigated their traditional outrigger sailing canoe by reading the stars and currents from Palau, covering more than a thousand miles, just as their ancestors did. Their voyage will cross more than 6,200 miles, taking the crew from Palau to Taiwan, on to Okinawa, Guam, Saipan, and Micronesia, tracing the routes of ancient seafarers who burst out of Taiwan to populate the Blue Continent.

Ready to receive the crew in Kaohsiung was Governor Lourdes Leon Guerrero, visiting Taiwan’s southern metropolis to sign a sister city agreement, hailing future cooperation in tourism, culture, education, and business exchanges. Guam and Kaohsiung have recently had burgeoning ties, with Guam sending its first ever delegation to the World Indigenous Traditional Games last year in Kaohsiung, and Guam’s annual participation in Kaohsiung’s Sunshine Island Vibe Fest, a cross-cultural festival that showcases island and Southeast Asian cultures.

According to Heidi Chang, Kaohsiung City’s director of international affairs: “Our sister-city relationship with Guam originated from tourism cooperation. It began through the Sunshine Island Vibe Fest.”

Although Taiwan is largely considered part of the East Asian cultural sphere, Kaohsiung may be thought of as the northernmost city of Southeast Asia. With a large population originally hailing from Southeast Asia, the staccato tones of Taiwanese intermingle with Tagalog and Thai in the winding alleys emanating from the city’s bustling port.

Kaohsiung is also a gateway to Taiwan’s indigenous populations, as one moves north into the hills or east along the coast. Even in the urban center it is not uncommon to see indigenous Paiwan proudly wearing their traditional woven dress, and hear the distinctive jingles of an unmarried Paiwan woman’s silver ornaments.

In Southern Taiwan, much as in Guam, Southeast Asian and indigenous Austronesian cultures mingle and fuse to produce an open and multiethnic society.

These links provide a solid basis to build stronger ties between Guam and Southern Taiwan. Much has been made about potentially expanded transport links between Taiwan and Guam, including a new cruise line and potentially a direct flight from Kaohsiung, but efforts must be made not only to attract Taiwanese to visit Guam, but to get them to know Guam distinctively and build deep connections between the two islands. A direct flight on Taiwan’s national China Airlines may make be more convenient, but United’s existing direct link from Taiwan’s largest airport in Taoyuan has run half empty for the past year.

If China Airlines opens the flight, it is a great opportunity to bring back its indigenous themed livery, “Masalu! Taiwan,” an important step towards the Taiwanization of China Airlines. Whereas China Airlines once had ambitious marketing campaigns aimed at promoting Taiwan’s identity and cultures, it now focuses on foreign gimmicks such as Pokemon.

How then can Guam appeal to the Southern Taiwanese traveler? Let’s start with two things they almost universally love: festivals and night markets. Guam should market traditional and new festivals to Taiwanese travelers, providing information in Mandarin Chinese and improving accessibility for foreign travelers. The Tumon Sunday night market has been successfully developed into a tourist attraction, but the tourism bureau should work to market and expand access to the smaller village night markets, and create a “night market passport” itinerary that appeals to Taiwanese travelers. Tourists can use a “night market passport” to get unique stamps at each night market after making a purchase, and a fully stamped passport could be redeemed for a special prize, such as the Guam-exclusive tanned Hello Kitty dolls that are in hot demand in Taiwan!

Director Chang thinks tourism might be the first step to higher levels of cooperation, “Looking ahead, potential areas of cooperation under discussion include education exchanges and student exchange programs… we also see opportunities for future collaboration in smart healthcare.”

The shared rediscovery of indigenous traditions is also ripe for exchanges between Taiwan and Guam. Through events and festivals organized around common disappearing cultural traditions such as seafaring, tattooing, sports, or cuisines, Guam can appeal to indigenous youth from Southern Taiwan as a destination for shared rediscovery. Cultural revival in the region will depend on these cross-border collaborations; already, traditional comb tattooing has been restored to Taiwan by indigenous artist Cudjuy Patjidres, who relearnt the tradition in New Zealand from a native Hawai’ian artist. There is no reason Guam cannot also position itself in the center of these important exchanges.

The sister city agreement may be new, but in reality, the islands have been brothers for millennia. As the brave young seafarers of the Alingano Maisu have shown us, direct air travel isn’t required to connect the peoples of these islands. All that is required is determination, pride in one’s culture, and a desire to find the familiar in the unknown.

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There are few regimes more vile, more oppressive, and more loathsome than the murderous regime of Africa’s last absolute monarch: King Mswati III of Eswatini, a notorious child predator who tortures and murders dissidents and drives diamond-encrusted Maybachs while half his country lives in abject poverty. He once fined himself a cow for taking a child bride after ostensibly outlawing the practice.

Taiwan calls him an ally.

In fact, Taiwanese taxpayers are underwriting the whole operation. Taiwan’s relationship with the despotic hermit kingdom has come to the forefront this week as China blocked President William Lai Ching-te’s attempt to visit Eswatini (also known as Swaziland) for King Mswati’s birthday party by pressuring the governments of the Seychelles, Madagascar, and Mauritius to deny airspace overflight rights to Taiwan.

Taipei has protested and the political establishment is up in arms here, but China may have just done Taiwan a favor. The relationship with Eswatini accomplishes nothing for Taiwan, is incredibly damaging to Taiwan’s reputation and values, and severely undermines Taiwan’s very legitimate claims to sovereignty and statehood.

Africa’s Epstein: A stain on Taiwan’s reputation

Despite claiming to have a foreign policy rooted in “democracy” and “values-based diplomacy,” Taiwan’s government enables the most despotic and tyrannical regime in Africa, bribing the mad king with private jets which he uses to fly to Taiwan for free healthcare while ruling over the world’s most HIV-positive population. Instead of providing his people with lifesaving antiretroviral medications, or food for their hungry mouths, he throws multi-million dollar birthday parties subsidized by the Taiwanese government, most of which goes towards luxury car purchases.

The tyrant’s abuses have been well-known for decades, and by all accounts he is quite proud of his despotic antics. To recount just a small summary of his disgusting, deplorable, and dictatorial behavior: King Mswati III has murdered pro-democracy activists in cold blood, including beyond Eswatini’s borders, orchestrated the mass shooting of student protestors, banned political parties, kidnapped and tortured local and foreign journalists, and kidnapped and raped girls in forced “marriages” in a disgusting yearly ritual known as the “reed dance.”

The last point bears further discussion and has long gripped the international community. In custom he largely invented, all virgin girls in the kingdom from ages 11-17 are forced to attend a ceremony and parade naked before the king and his entourage, who then kidnap selected girls for impregnation by the king, after which they join his harem of abused “wives.” These girls are abducted, forced to drop out of grade school, and then imprisoned in his palaces.

The practice is so universally despised and revolting that even Jeffrey Epstein thought it would a bridge too far to attend, though he did “want to go,” as expressed in an email to Jide Zeitlin, then-chair of Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund and former Goldman Sachs partner:

Mswati himself fits the bill as “Africa’s Epstein,” flying his harem of underage girls around on a Taiwanese “Lolita Express.”

Is it “values-based diplomacy” to support this? Why exactly does the Taiwanese president want to appear so badly with someone so unsavory that even Jeffrey Epstein didn’t want to be seen with him?

Taiwan’s direct involvement in abuses against the Swazi people has been revealed this week in a damning exposé by Taiwan-based investigative journalist James Baron, whose groundbreaking report The Ugly Side of Eswatini-Taiwan Relations, has exposed grave abuses by Taiwanese government-funded organizations in the autocratic kingdom.

The report is worth a read in full for the litany of abuses, funded by Taiwanese taxpayers, but include allegations of Taiwanese food security officials literally snatching food from the mouths of starving local workers, racism and segregation, the hiring of kung-fu teachers with a known history of child abuse, threats of reporting employees who raised concerns about such abuses to local authorities, and using so-called “disinformation experts” to train Eswatini authorities in censoring local pro-democracy activists on social media.

In response to these allegations, instead of taking great concern for human rights and the potential abuse of taxpayer funding, Taiwan’s foreign ministry has instead responded with false and defamatory attacks on Baron’s credibility—in ways that legal experts in Taiwan have suggested may be libelous. James is a thoroughly credible reporter who not only has lived in Taiwan for decades, but has actually worked in Taiwan’s overseas development assistance institutions, and is deeply sourced within the country. Many brave Eswatini citizens literally put their lives on the line to talk to him, knowing they might face torture or certain death.

The entire report is scandalous and bears reading in full, but a few choice excerpts have stood out.

According to the report, Taiwan’s Amitofo Care Center relocated teachers to Eswatini from Malawi who had been removed following a report in The Economist last year documenting how they beat students to the point of breaking their bones and used orphans in wildlife tracking. In Eswatini, their abuse of orphans continued, according to two local teachers who confronted the foreign teachers upon seeing them physically abusing students:

Two kung fu coaches hurt the children they were training so badly that they had broken arms and were sent to Nhlangano health center.

The two teachers cited genuine fears for their own safety and that of their families for their decision to remain anonymous. “Critics here can just disappear without a trace, and nobody cares,” said the second teacher.

Eswatini is also a country that suffers from severe malnutrition, which Taiwan is allegedly supposed to be addressing through the Taiwan-Africa Vegetable Initiative (TAVI), yet:

Swazi employees of TAVI report routinely going hungry while carrying out their duties, with Taiwanese management forcing them to go without food for protracted periods.

In one incident in October 2025, food was snatched from a TAVI employee by a Taiwanese project manager in front of Swazi legislators attending an event for one of these projects at a primary school in Eswatini’s capital of Mbabane.

Such incidents are widely known in Eswatini, yet local media is unable to report on them due to the tendency of the regime to murder journalists. As a result, most scandalous news is reported from outlets located in neighboring South Africa, home to a majority of the Swazi people, and Eswatini’s democratic opposition. King Mswati and the Taiwanese government claim that opposition media and politicians are funded by China, and while no evidence has ever been presented of a funding arrangement, who can blame them? If Taiwan were funding the abuse and rape of your countrymen, no one would blame you for taking Chinese funding.

Yet Taiwan’s response has been to use taxpayer funds to send supposed “NGOs” to Eswatini to help with the suppression of news stories critical of the child rapist King and his tyrannical rule, many of which were written by dissident Zweli Martin Dlamini, who has been accused of taking Chinese funding:

Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung joined his counterpart Pholile Shakantu in signing the MoU, with a stated aim of combating disinformation in the country.

Dlamini’s contention that the agreement, which allegedly provided over $610,000 in funding, was designed to stifle dissent and was specifically aimed at Swaziland News chimes with an account of a four-day cybersecurity workshop run by Taiwan Digital Diplomacy Association (TDDA) in Eswatini in December 2025, with support from MOFA.

“Everyone was mentioning him, there,” said Samuel Straw, head of research at TDDA, referring to Dlamini. “They were very direct, saying that he was posting fake news, funded by China, and causing issues for them.”

While Straw said the participants framed their questions carefully, the import was clear: “Essentially, they wanted the tools and knowledge to take down Facebook posts criticizing the government.”

Best case practices from the European Union in tackling Russian propaganda were shared, said Straw. “But in Eswatini’s case, it is against anti-government protesters. And who decides what is misinformation? The authorities, right?”

What has been shocking has been not just the Taiwanese government’s choice to respond to these serious allegations by defaming the widely-respect journalist and news outlet behind the independent reporting, which unfortunately is expected behavior at this point, but the role of activist NGOs such as TDDA, which brands itself as an independent pro-democracy organization, in continuing the slander.

In a remarkable turn of events, after sharing James’ article on my public social media accounts—as I often do with articles I find important—I received a vaguely threatening email from the TDDA, claiming that my sharing of the article critical of King Mswati was personally endangering their staff, and demanding I apologize for sharing a news article on social media in a democratic country.

The Taiwan Digital Diplomacy Association should spend less time attacking journalists and more time reflecting on the fact that they did PR training for the Jeffrey Epstein of Africa.

These incidents are not only stomach-churning in their own right, but they are insulting to the generations of Taiwanese who fought so hard for the rights of freedom, democracy, expression, and belief against the brutal regime of the Kuomintang under martial law. In a period known as “White Terror,” democracy activists were disappeared, tortured, and executed, political parties were banned, independent media were censored, and a cult of personality was enforced around the tyrannical dictator Chiang Kai-shek.

This would be a familiar story to anyone living under the tyrannical regime in Eswatini.

The Democratic Progressive Party of President Lai was founded directly in opposition to all of these things. The founders of the DPP faced imprisonment and torture for opposing the Chiang party-state regime, and tens of thousands of Taiwanese were murdered for their identity or beliefs. Yet all three DPP presidents have upheld the ROC policies of propping up a dictator guilty of the very crimes their political movement was founded against, all in the name of protecting the Republic of China government, in whose name the same abuses were carried out against the Taiwanese people.

Who defines sovereignty?

To take on the moral guilt and responsibility of supporting such a despotic and rapacious regime, Taiwan would have to be gaining some extraordinary security or other vital national interests. Although frequently referred to as an “ally” by government officials, newspapers, scholars and analysts alike, no one can actually point to any single thing the diplomatic relationship with Eswatini accomplishes for Taiwan.

The fact that the autocratic fiefdom of Eswatini recognizes the existence of the Republic of China does absolutely nothing to protect Taiwan or advance Taiwanese interests. In fact, all it does is keep alive the “one China” myth that Beijing is seeking to advance around the world, and which most Taiwanese reject. The relationship, along with the handful of other microstates and non-state entities that recognize the Republic of China, is a relic of an era when the People’s Republic of China and Republic of China competed around the world for recognition as the one true China. The PRC has clearly won that competition by now, and it is a competition the people of Taiwan, who do not identify as Chinese, have no interest in continuing.

Maintaining the “one China” myth only makes Taiwan look fundamentally unserious and promotes a false narrative that Taiwan is part of China and the Taiwanese people would like to “unite” with China. This is not a narrative that will build long-term support in countries that actually matter to Taiwan’s security, in fact it pushes those countries to view Taiwan’s preferred future as unifying with China.

Ironically, it is China that is working hard to dispel the one China myth and break the so-called 1992 consensus. In a regular press conference this week, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun stated: “It’s very clear that there’s no longer a so-called “ROC president” in the world anymore. Anyone who wears that false title is acting against history and will only invite disgrace upon themselves.”

If there is no ROC president anymore, then what does that leave? Just Taiwan, an independent state unassociated with China. In its unfinished campaign to derecognize the ROC, China has not grappled what will happen once the ROC is fully derecognized. Taipei’s diplomatic relationships with countries recognizing the ROC only aid Beijing’s narrative warfare.

Taiwan is indisputably an independent sovereign state with its own government, military, laws, and full control of its own borders. Its permanent population elects its own government, and it engages in foreign and commercial relations with other states. It issues passports and visas, assesses customs duties, levies taxes, and enforces its own laws, sometimes brutally. There is no higher authority on Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu than the government of Taiwan (ROC). Under the Montevideo Convention, Taiwan meets all the necessary conditions for statehood, possessing a permanent population, defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Although Taiwan’s government asserts its sovereignty under the Montevideo Convention, the declarative theory of statehood, it is unclear why it directs so much of its foreign policy towards advancing the constitutive theory of statehood, which defines statehood in terms of recognition by other states. The Montevideo Convention not only clearly defines that “the political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states,” but makes it clear that “recognition of a state may be express or tacit,” which indeed comprises the majority of Taiwan’s foreign relations.

Taiwan is faced with a choice: embracing the obviousness and reality of its sovereign existence as a Taiwanese state, or reducing itself to a rump Republic of China government with fantastical claims to sovereignty over China and Mongolia.

Taiwan says “look we’re a real country” and then presents as evidence is a series of tortured statements from the likes of Eswatini and St. Lucia, countries no one has ever heard of, or Palau and the Marshall Islands, which are functionally US overseas territories, or the Holy See, which is not only not even a country, but does not actually maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, having not sent an ambassador to Taiwan since the 1971 expulsion of the ROC from the United Nations. The Vatican has also consistently denied entry to the Taiwanese president, foreign minister, and all high-level government officials for the past decade.

Taiwan should not mortgage its sovereignty to a club of countries and pseudo-countries with tenuous claims of sovereignty of their own.

When the Taiwanese president attempts to legitimate his rule by crossing an ocean to present himself before an absolute monarch clad in animal hides, lavishing him with expensive gifts in return for designation as a sovereign, he looks like a Ryukyuan tributary ruler crossing the sea to kowtow before a Manchu emperor in return for legitimation as a subordinate ruler, and less like the democratically elected leader of a sovereign state heading one of the world’s major economies.

Does anyone seriously think that what the King of Eswatini says has any bearing on China’s claims to Taiwan or the United States’ determination to help Taiwan defend itself against China?

Taiwan’s foreign ministry is still stuck in the ROC era, paralyzed by the looming fear of complete derecognition. Yet it has nothing to fear, the constitutive theory of statehood is based on fantasy, and the declarative theory is simply a reflection of reality. If Eswatini or any other country no longer recognizes the ROC, no change will come to Taiwan’s continued sovereign ability to control its own territory. Honduras or Panama switching back to recognizing the ROC will do nothing to temper Beijing’s determination to claim Taiwan as its own.

Look no further than the pitiful situation of Palestine. Recognized now by nearly the entirety of the world, it still has no sovereign control of its own territory.

The trip has been embarrassing since before it even started. In advance of the trip, Taiwan’s foreign ministry lauded “40 African leaders” who offered their public support for Lai’s visit, yet did not dare to name a single one, or produce any evidence these leaders actually existed. If they existed at all, they appear to be backbencher IPAC types with little influence over their own countries’ foreign policy. The blocking of the trip has made it clear just how little influence Taiwan has in Africa.

The only public support Taiwan’s foreign ministry saw fit to publicize itself was a tweet by the unrecognized Republic of Somaliland (another Epstein favorite), leading Taiwanese officials and legislators to salivate over the inclusion of the ROC flag in the tweet.

What does Taiwan actually gain from Eswatini?

Taiwan gains literally nothing from its diplomatic relationship with Eswatini. In numerous engagements over the years with Taiwanese officials, I have never once been able to get any of them to explain what is actually concretely gained by any of these diplomatic partnerships. Without fail, platitudes are restated about the importance of the “advocacy” these countries do for Taiwan, which largely consists of brief speeches made at meetings of international organizations such as the UN and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) about the importance of including Taiwan, after which Taiwan invariably loses whatever vote is put forward.

In light of this situation, Formosa Review is issuing a public challenge: if anyone is able to produce evidence of something concrete that Eswatini provides that directly enhances Taiwan’s security and national interests, Formosa Review will provide a prize of $1000. Examples of concrete support for Taiwanese interests include the provision of advanced weaponry, commitments to Taiwan’s military defense, direct pressure exerted on China to maintain the status quo, or successfully convincing other nations to support Taiwan as well.

Eswatini’s supposed “advocacy” in the ICAO has been powerless to stop ICAO member-states from closing their airspace to Taiwan’s president. This supposed “advocacy” in fact does not even exist, Eswatini’s foreign ministry has lodged no complaints nor made any public statements over its neighbors’ aggressive moves to blockade access to the landlocked nation. In fact, Eswatini does not even have permanent diplomatic missions to most of those international organizations it claims to advocate for Taiwan in.

Instead, it has been Taiwan’s true allies, the US, Japan, UK, and EU countries that have protested the incident and advocated for Taiwan. Formosa Review can also confirm that several of these countries directly made diplomatic protests to the governments of the Seychelles, Mauritius, and Madagascar through their resident ambassadors. Eswatini does not even have embassies in any of those countries, nor do they have embassies in Eswatini, or even non-resident embassies in neighboring South Africa or Moçambique. Taiwan is relying on a country for diplomatic relations that itself has a more limited diplomatic presence than Taiwan does.

There is of course, a great irony here, while the US has protested the denial of transit by the Seychelles, Mauritius, and Madagascar, it itself denied transit permission to President Lai last summer, in order to smooth relations over with China. The situations are not identical, but for a more relevant comparison, it is undeniable the US established precedent for this sort of bullying behavior in 2013 when it pressured European allies to deny airspace transit to the aircraft of Bolivian president Evo Morales, forcing his plane down in Vienna, on groundless suspicions that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was on-board.

These rules only work when they apply to everyone. For all their bluster about China breaking the international order, the US and its allies shoulder quite a bit of responsibility themselves. That order is quickly collapsing under its inherent contradictions; what may replace it is as of yet uncertain, but it was an order that in any event never once had any respect for the self-determination of the Taiwanese people.

Where does Taiwan go from here?

The Taiwanese people struggled for democracy against a brutal dictatorship that brooked no dissent, murdering dissidents and muzzling the people it ruled over. The long Taiwanese fight for freedom and self-determination over hundreds of years of foreign or autocratic rule is one of the world’s most inspiring and compelling national stories.

To deny those same freedoms and rights to the emaSwati people in the name of Taiwan is a gross perversion.

Continuing the diplomatic relationship is not good for Taiwan and not good for Eswatini. It is time for continued subsidies to the tyrannical child rapist to end.

I am not advocating an immediate unilateral break in relations, but there is little doubt that downgrading the relationship will push Eswatini to seek ties instead with Beijing. This is fine, and reflects that the relationship has no depth or sincerity, but is simply transactional.

If the relationship persists, when the people of Eswatini finally rise up and hang their mad king for his crimes, the new regime will surely immediately sever ties with Taiwan and open relations with China.

And who can blame them? It is Taiwan that has polished the boot on their necks.

When that day comes, literally nothing will change in Taiwan’s security or status. Taiwan will remain sovereign and independent, and that independence will remain guarded by Taiwan’s own people, its military, and its true allies: the United States and Japan.

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Formosa Review can exclusively confirm that earlier this month Beijing refused to renew the visa of the New York Times’ longtime China correspondent Vivian Wang, effectively expelling her from the country after six years on the ground. The visa denial, which came as she was outside the country reporting from Seoul, was ostensibly in response to the virtual appearance of Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te this past December at the Times’ DealBook Summit, where host Andrew Ross Sorkin referred to Taiwan as a “country,” breaking with the Times’ longstanding practice of denying Taiwan’s existence as a sovereign and independent country.

Beijing has long wielded access to the country in an attempt to shape coverage, or punish coverage it disapproves of, through strict visa restrictions and expulsions. Foreigners are expressly prohibited from conducting journalism in the country unless entering under a journalism visa, known as a J-visa, for both long and short-term reporting. Foreign correspondents stationed in China must renew their J1 visas annually, a process which is often used to pressure foreign media over coverage displeasing to Beijing.

Press freedom watchdog RSF has called this “visa blackmail,” and the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China has extensively documented how visa restrictions, or threats thereof, have been directed at reporters from countries with tensions with China or as a response to reporting on sensitive issues such as human rights or corruption.

Despite having consistently correctly referred to Taiwan as a “country” in past coverage, the Times has bent over backwards over the past three decades to hew to Beijing’s propaganda by not only refusing to call Taiwan a country, but inventing nonsensical monikers for the East Asian archipelagic nation, such as “democratically governed island” or “not-quite nation.”

Taiwan is, of course, not a single island but an archipelago, as the Times and other international media frequently remind us through their strange obsession with Kinmen, a cluster of islets under Taiwanese control, yet of little importance or meaning to Taiwan.

And while Taiwanese nationalism has evolved over the decades, it long predates Taiwan’s independence, and certainly exists today. For some reason, the Times has unilaterally decided that there is no Taiwanese nation, while also determining it acceptable to refer to Scotland as a “country,” despite the fact that the semi-autonomous British region has no passport, no currency, no constitution, no military, nor customs or immigration controls of its own.

Instead of punishing the New York Times, the authorities in Beijing should be thanking them for the decades of work they have put in to mislead readers about Taiwan’s status.

This is not to deny the remarkable work many journalists for the Times have done in China, including hard-hitting features on human rights and the plundering of China’s wealth by its rapacious and corrupt leaders, which reporters have doggedly pursued, knowing such reports would likely lead to their expulsion.

Misleading the world about Taiwan and attempting to curry favor with Beijing is by no means limited to the Times, but the lesson should be learnt by all foreign outlets attempting to cover both nations: capitulation to China’s narratives about Taiwan will not shield you from Beijing’s ire.

It is ultimately in Beijing’s interest to have a large cohort of international media reporting from within the country. Investors get spooked and avoid taking risks when countries are closed off and there is no independent foreign press to accurately report conditions within the country. This is the reason China began to open up to foreign press, and ultimately why it often relents and welcomes back reporters and outlets it has previously expelled.

It would behoove the foreign media to hold their ground and simply ignore China’s “red lines,” if a reporter is expelled, so be it. Erasing the Taiwanese nation is not worth a few visas and press junkets.

The New York Times declined to comment on the record.

Despite representations to the contrary, it is not President William Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) who has raised tensions and refused peaceful dialogue. His invitation to Xi Jinping to sit down as equals over a bowl of shrimp fried rice and bubble tea still stands, answered only by aggressive military exercises and missile volleys from China.

There is a longstanding trend in Western media, worsening over the past three decades, where foreign media have distorted Taiwanese politics and identity to affirm pro-Chinese narratives imposed by the Kuomintang (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) during their four decades of authoritarian rule over Taiwan, a formerly-Japanese archipelago that was never historically part of “China.”

For unknown reasons, Western media hew to the Chinese nationalist narrative that the dispute between China and Taiwan is an ideological dispute between the Communists and Nationalists, beginning in 1949, and ultimately “Chinese on both sides” would like to “reunify.” This narrative ignores the roughly 85% of Taiwanese who have lived in Taiwan for centuries, who overwhelmingly do not identify as Chinese.

Taiwanese nationalism developed under Japanese rule, alongside other nationalist movements around the world (including Chinese nationalist movements that emerged in opposition to Manchu rule in China) and was brutally suppressed by the KMT when it arrived in Taiwan in 1945. When the Taiwanese people rose up in opposition to the KMT’s Chinese Nationalist rule on February 28, 1947, the KMT responded by murdering tens of thousands of Taiwanese civilians, beginning a campaign of political repression and organized terrorism against anyone opposed to the KMT’s insistence that Taiwan was part of China.

White Terror, as it was known, was only ended by the emergence of a Taiwanese nationalist political movement calling for democracy, the Tangwai movement, which resulted in the founding of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), a “green camp” Taiwanese nationalist party.

Since democratization, the main cleavage in Taiwanese politics is not left/right or progressive/conservative, but national identity, where the green side, led by the DPP, represents Taiwanese nationalism, and the blue side, led by the Kuomintang (KMT), represents Chinese nationalism. Although only 2.5% of Taiwanese identify solely as Chinese, election results end up a bit more complicated due to local and governance issues, as well as “anti-voting,” but by far, the dominant nationalism in Taiwan is Taiwanese nationalism.

It is with absolute historical illiteracy and a complete mockery of political analysis that Western media insist on referring to the KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party, as the “Nationalist Party” in the Taiwanese context. This misleads readers into thinking that the party represents the national identity of people in Taiwan, and believing that the dispute between China and Taiwan is merely political, not a fundamental divergence of national identities.

It is akin to referring to the Black Panther Party as America’s “Nationalist Party” and omitting the “Black” part.

Why does the New York Times intentionally mislead readers about Taiwan?

The biggest offender is the New York Times, which has a long and perplexing history of distorting Taiwanese politics and history to support pro-China narratives. These contortions, which require intentional and willful manipulation, reached their most absurd apotheosis last month when the Times referred to the KMT as “Taiwan’s Nationalist Party,” when in fact the very basis of the KMT’s political identity today is explicit opposition to Taiwanese nationalism. This misleads readers into believing that the opposition in Taiwan are indeed Taiwanese nationalists, and seeking accommodation under Chinese rule is compatible with the Taiwanese people’s national sentiments.

It didn’t used to be this way.

The strangest part is that the New York Times did not used to be this inaccurate and distortive of Taiwanese politics. In 1993, editorial board member David C. Unger wrote a column outlining the differences between the two nationalist movements in Taiwan, observing: “the most conspicuous nationalism to be encountered on the island these days is not Chinese but Taiwanese.”

Correctly referring to the Kuomintang as the “Chinese Nationalist Party,” Unger penned a concise and highly accurate framing of the nationalist divide in Taiwan. Such nuance and accuracy are completely omitted in today’s coverage of Taiwan, likely due to editorial interference from editors and correspondents who have now spent more time in China than Taiwan. In those days, the Times frequently referred to Taiwan as a “country,” because it is, yet now it creates invented and inaccurate monikers such as “democratically governed island” or “not-quite nation.”

Lost in Translation

The correct English translation of Kuomintang is “Chinese Nationalist Party.” If you have any doubts about this, you can check their official website, consult the business card of any KMT official, or simply listen to how KMT politicians refer to their party. In Chinese they refer to it as “中國國民黨” which literally means “Chinese Nationalist Party.” My personal preference is simply to refer to it as the Kuomintang or KMT, given the widespread use of the untranslated term in English, but if it must be translated it must be translated correctly.

Consider how Western media refer to the Chinese Communist Party, known in Chinese as 中國共產黨, although it is shorthanded in Chinese as simply the Communist Party or Gongchandang (共產黨 ) just as the Chinese Nationalist Party is shorthanded as Kuomintang or Nationalist Party. In arguments with foreign correspondents, I have heard many exclaim that they are merely literally translating the characters Kuomintang, yet none have ever translated Gongchandang just as literally. It is always referred to as the “Chinese Communist Party” or CCP.

The translation is something both the KMT and CCP agree on, among a litany of other basic agreements on Chinese nationalism, Leninism, opposition to Taiwanese sovereignty, and support for China’s illegal annexation of the South China Sea. In contrast to Western reporting on the meeting, Chinese state media have no problem correctly translating the name of the KMT.

A Third United Front?

To those familiar with both Chinese and Taiwanese history, this meeting comes as no surprise. This is no historic “reconciliation,” merely the continued alliance of two parties fiercely opposed to Taiwan’s independence and sovereignty. Every major KMT chair this century has met with China’s leaders, and KMT politicians regularly engage at high levels with their CCP counterparts in closed-door meetings across the strait.

Longtime Taiwan-based journalist Chris Horton described the alliance as a “Third United Front” this week in Nikkei Asia, observing that “most coverage neglects the important context that this is a meeting between two Chinese ethno-nationalist parties who oppose Taiwanese self-determination.”

United Front invokes the historic formal alliances between the CCP and KMT in the early 20^th century to unify China1 and to resist Japan’s invasion. Chris is absolutely correct in his observation that the two parties are at a basic level “Chinese ethno-nationalist parties,” and his new book Ghost Nation is a handy English-language primer for anyone seeking to understand the pan-Green perspective of Taiwan’s history and politics.

While a Third United Front is a useful heuristic for understanding the natural historical alignment of the two parties, today’s Kuomintang is far weaker and less consequential than its historic counterpart. At the time, Chiang Kai-shek had absolute control over the party, which exercised a great deal of power in China.2 Today, Cheng Li-wun is struggling to consolidate control over the KMT, which itself has diminished appeal and influence in Taiwan.

There has been open rebellion in the KMT over Cheng’s alignment with the CCP and her opposition to a large defense spending package, which has split the KMT caucus. While Cheng has strongly opposed passing the DPP-proposed defense bill in its entirety, Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen, a moderate who is likely to be the KMT’s 2028 presidential candidate, has urged her party to support most of the spending package.

According to a KMT insider, while Cheng’s political performance has been impressive, “this does not change skepticism inside the Party about her true [pro-PRC] nature,” which may hurt the KMT’s electoral chances.

These fears are not unfounded. Despite decades of preaching engagement and accommodation as a way to reduce tensions across the Strait, the KMT has little to show for its efforts. China has only become more aggressive in menacing Taiwan and opposing its continued independence, something that has not gone unnoticed by Taiwanese voters. High-level visits by KMT officials have done nothing to stop China’s daily incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ, its menacing of Taiwan’s coastal waters, and its threatening military exercises.

In a world where nationalism remains the most powerful political ideology, the Chinese Nationalist Party will struggle to compete nationally in a country where the overwhelming majority of voters identify as Taiwanese, not Chinese. Bucking global anti-incumbency trends, Taiwanese voters have continued to choose the DPP in three straight presidential elections, reflecting national identity sentiments. Although the KMT continues to be highly competitive in local elections, which are driven primarily by local concerns, the salience of national identity and national security in presidential elections makes it difficult for a Chinese Nationalist candidate to win in majority Taiwanese country. Taiwanese voters have made it clear that while they trust Kuomintang politicians to run their cities, they do not trust the KMT to defend their sovereignty against an increasingly aggressive China.

And why should they? It’s the Chinese Nationalist Party, it always has been.

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To be fair, South Korea did start the row when it began last year listing Taiwan as “(China) Taiwan” on eArrival cards for visitors arriving from Taiwan. Labeling Taiwan as part of China is inaccurate, contradicts Seoul’s own One-China policy in favor of China’s One-China principle, offends the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese who do not see themselves as Chinese or part of China, and needlessly hands China a diplomatic victory for nothing in return.

Still, Taiwan’s extremely public response has been aggressive, couched in language of retaliation and sanctions, directed at a friendly neighbor with which it enjoys close economic, cultural, and political ties. The absurdity of the disproportionate response by Taiwan’s foreign ministry is compounded by the government’s relative silence when it comes to the numerous other much more visibly prominent examples of countries and entities falsely labeling Taiwan as part of China.

The mislabeling of Taiwan as part of China in dropdown menus is indeed a major issue, this is how most people encounter the names of countries, and is important in shaping global perceptions of sovereignty and geography. This is why China attaches such importance to erasing Taiwan’s sovereignty in all such places, attempting to subsume it already into China in the global public consciousness. Yet the eArrival card for South Korea is an odd battle to pick among the many more prominent and visible instances ranging from the Olympics to the name of Taiwan’s national flag carrier.

As it stands today, almost anyone trying to visit Taiwan will find themselves booking a ticket to “Taipei, China,” on their airline of preference. For many, this is the first impression they will ever have of Taiwan, the first information they will see about its geography or sovereignty will be false information claiming that Taipei is a city in China, rather than in Taiwan.[1] The only foreign carriers who correctly locate Taiwanese airports are those from the US, Japan, and indeed Korea.

A foreigner seeking to visit and learn about Taiwan can book a flight ticket to “Taipei, China,” stay at a hotel listing its address as “Taipei, China,” and complete his or her trip having been told at every stage along the journey that Taipei is in China. Does the Taiwanese government not worry that these false impressions will influence foreign visitors to believe that Taiwan is or wants to be part of China? When these visitors return to their countries, will they support policies maintaining Taiwan’s independence? Or will they come away with the impression that Taiwan is just a special administrative region of China?

If Taiwan’s government has decided that its global mislabeling is a critical threat to national sovereignty, which I would agree with, then it needs to actively fight each and every instance of national erasure. Taiwan also has far more leverage over private airlines and hotels than it has over other sovereign countries’ foreign ministries. All it needs to do is refuse landing permissions to any airlines who falsely label Taipei (or other cities in the country) as being in China.

China’s economic coercion and the lure of the Chinese market are commonly cited as reasons private corporations will accede to China’s false narratives about Taiwan. But the US, Japanese, and Korean airlines flying to Taiwan have far more flights to China than they do to Taiwan. Some airlines, particularly state-owned ones in China-friendly countries, may resist or choose to drop Taiwan routes, but this underestimates the importance of the Taiwanese market to major airlines.

One fifth of Singapore’s population visits Taiwan every year, does anyone really think Singapore Airlines (and its budget variant Scoot) will drop this massive market over making modifications to its dropdown menus? Taiwan graciously allows Singapore’s military to train on Taiwanese soil, even going as far as to allow Singapore to label its military aircraft as “ROC Air Force,” yet Singapore offers only indignity in return.

Some airlines, such as Australia’s Qantas, don’t even fly to China, yet still kowtow to its labeling requirements, while profiting off the Taiwanese market.

No private business should be allowed to profit off Taiwan’s market while simultaneously advancing China’s false narratives about Taiwan.

Air freight also plays a major role in semiconductor packaging and delivery, meaning that countries losing directly flights with Taiwan will find themselves self-sabotaging their own critical supply chains.

So why pick this fight of all things? The eArrival card entry is only going to be seen by those traveling from Taiwan to Korea, predominantly Taiwanese who know the name of their own country. Meanwhile, Taiwan welcomed nearly 9 million foreign arrivals last year, the overwhelming majority of whom bore tickets reading “Taipei, China.”

Taiwan’s foreign ministry seems to be prioritizing this spat with Korea because it is something annoying Taiwanese citizens directly, continuing a pattern where the ministry often prioritizes domestic political calculations over more pressing foreign policy matters.

In Korea’s defense, the “country” section of the eArrival form still lists Taiwan as Taiwan for nationality, and although Taiwan is listed as “China (Taiwan),” it is listed differently than China, Hong Kong, and Macau, which are listed as “China PR,” for the People’s Republic of China, as opposed to the Republic of China, Taiwan’s formal legal name. The tension between the two names for Taiwan has consolidated around a “non-consensus consensus identity” of “(ROC) Taiwan,” and it is likely that if the form simply said “ROC (Taiwan)” or “Rep China (Taiwan)” then there would simply be no controversy. The use of “China” on its own implies the concept of a singular “China” that includes Taiwan (even though Taiwan has never been part of China), an idea rejected by the majority of Taiwanese.

Taiwan’s supposed “retaliation” against Korea is honestly more embarrassing than effectual. The foreign ministry has decided its great retribution will be to label Korea as “Korea (South)” on residence permits and arrival cards.

I don’t think I have ever met a single Korean who objected to being called South Korean.[2] In formal diplomatic contexts, South Korean delegates will prefer to use “Republic of Korea” as the name of the country, as they should, but South Korea is a universally accepted nickname for the country, and in fact is the way the country is referred to on US arrival cards and visa application forms. There is no evidence the South Koreans have ever objected or expressed offense to this treatment by the United States or any other country. It boggles the mind to imagine how Taiwan intends this to be a pressure campaign against Seoul.

Taiwan is risking disrupting relations with a major economic partner in the chip industry, a potential security partner, and fellow East Asian democracy, all over a minor issue of low salience and low global impact. The actual impacts of the eArrival card are quite minor compared to developments farther afield, such as Denmark’s decision to list Taiwanese people as “Chinese” on national ID cards, breaking with decades of Danish and European precedent. Denmark has become the sole country in the EU to falsely identify Taiwanese as Chinese on their identity cards, needlessly advancing Chinese propaganda and discriminating against Danish residents and citizens of Taiwanese descent.

On March 31, South Korea’s foreign ministry announced that the “last point of departure” and “next destination” fields would be removed altogether from the eArrival cards, as part of a planned update to match the new format for new paper arrival cards, rendering the dispute moot.

There is no evidence this was anything more than an update to the new system, yet Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry will no doubt claim victory, having achieved nothing other than raising tensions for months with South Korea, while leaving unchallenged the widespread mislabeling of Taiwan by foreign airlines and hotels profiting from the Taiwanese market.

Taiwan must stand up and fight its erasure from the global consciousness, and it should wage that fight where it matters the most.

[1] As an aside, it annoys me to no end to see Taoyuan Airport (TPE) described as being in Taipei- it’s 40 minutes away from Taipei, and Taipei has its own very convenient downtown airport in Songshan (TSA).

[2] Caveat: I’ve met a few North Koreans in my time. They preferred North Korean or 朝鮮人.

The raging US-Israeli war on Iran has produced no shortage in takes and analyses of how this will impact the Indo-Pacific. But the most disturbing thread has been an ongoing campaign to cast this war as some sort of “5D chess move” against China, claiming that the war is either primarily motivated by a strategy to contain China, or otherwise will have the effect of deterring Chinese military action against Taiwan.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, every day the war continues, Taiwan falls into a more precarious position, along with America’s other East Asian allies.

This essay will first recount the range of arguments offered supporting the idea that the Iran war deters or weakens China, after dismantling them, I will outline the war’s impacts on the US-China balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, and how it directly imperils Taiwan’s security. Finally, I will analyze Taiwan’s responses to the war and the lessons it needs to draw from the conflict.

This is the first in a series of exclusive exposés of how US policy in the Middle East impacts Taiwan, and Taiwan’s misguided foreign policy objectives in the Middle East. Future articles will address the influence of AIPAC and pro-Israel lobbying efforts in Taipei, which have produced this distortion, and how Taiwan’s Middle East policies have set it on a path to losing support in the United States and around the world. Subscribe today to receive early access to these exclusive reports, which contain never before published scoops from on the ground in Taipei.

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Myth #1: The Iran War is all about containing China.

This myth claims that despite common interpretations, the Trump Administration’s primary motivation and strategic goal for attacking Iran is to contain China. This most circulated version of this argument, The Iran Strike Is All About China, has been articulated by right-wing blogger , who has argued that the only legitimate source of information about the war comes from Donald Trump’s Twitter account.

Let’s examine the evidence to the contrary: numerous administration officials, including Secretary of State cum National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, Speaker Mike Johnson, and Donald Trump himself have all made it clear that Israel was the driving factor behind the war. Extensive reporting in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg has outlined how Benjamin Netanyahu worked aggressively to lobby Trump to strike Iran, a forty-year goal of his, cultivating Lindsey Graham to directly persuade Trump.

The recent resignation letter of National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, and accounts from foreign diplomats privy to the US-Iranian negotiations bring additional confirmation. The White House has also copy and pasted a document produced by an Israeli influence operation to justify the war.

There are also various public explanations the administration has trotted out to attempt to sell the war to a skeptical American public: destroying Iran’s conventional ballistic missile capabilities, claims of a restarted nuclear program, retaliation for proxy attacks on Americans and Israel, or to support a democratic uprising by the Iranian people.

Not once do any of these officials claim this is driven by a need to contain China, even as the administration has raised the China angle to justify military operations against Venezuela and Greenland.

This raises an extremely important counterfactual: there is bipartisan consensus on the need to contain China, a position which is also popular with the general public. According to polling from Pew, when asked to name the country that is the greatest threat to the United States, a 42% of Americans name China, compared to 2% and 1% for Iran and Israel, respectively (25% name Russia, and 20% are undecided).

The bottom line: If the war really were about China, the administration would be trying to make that argument.

Myth #2: China’s global alliances are being dismantled

Versions of this argument generally follow two threads: first, the US attack on Iran, following the decapitation operation in Venezuela, is a step to dismantling China’s global system of alliances, reducing China’s ability to project power. Second, the fact that China (and in some readings Russia as well) did not directly intervene to defend Iran against the US-Israeli attack shows that China is not a credible ally, and unable to counter the immense power of US military force projection.

These arguments show a fundamental misunderstanding of Chinese foreign policy and grand strategy. To begin with, China has only a single formal “ally,” North Korea, which it defended when US forces approached the Chinese border during the Korean War. Since the 1950s, China has entered no formal alliances, sent no expeditionary forces overseas, and only deployed its military in brief border conflicts with its neighbors, as well as against its own citizens internally.

China has followed the wisdom of George Washington, avoiding permanent foreign alliances, and focusing on economic development and world trade instead of overextended foreign military entanglements, while the US used the unipolar moment to engage in reckless adventurism overseas.

As the meme goes: “if you ever feel useless, just remember the USA took four presidents, thousands of lives, trillions of dollars and 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.” We are now nearing on thousands of lives and trillions of dollars to replace Ayatollah Khamenei with Ayatollah Khamenei.

China’s lack of alliances and overseas military engagements is not simply a focus on getting rich while the US overextends itself. It reflects a grand strategy befitting the differing relative positions the two great powers find themselves in. China is not a regional hegemon, hemmed in by a powerful US alliance structure including Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines. In contrast, the US is a regional hegemon, having complete dominance of the Western Hemisphere, freeing it up to project power far away from its own neighborhood.

The United States doesn’t need to worry that if it deploys its Navy and Air Force to far-flung theaters that Mexico will swoop in and take Texas, or that Canada will annex Alaska. China knows that were it to be embroiled in a long and attritional conflict overseas, it would risk upsetting its balance of power in East Asia, potentially emboldening Taiwan to formally “declare independence,” Japan to militarize the Senkaku Islands, the Philippines and Vietnam to reclaim South China Sea features, or any number of revisions to the status quo.

China has a singular military goal for the foreseeable future: conquering and annexing Taiwan. Everything else is a distraction, and slows China’s military progress towards that goal. China’s grand strategy hinges on conquering Taiwan, defeating the US and its allies in East Asia, and breaking out of the First and Second Island Chains. Only after achieving these goals would China be freed up and able to engage in the extravagant military adventurism the US has been able to indulge itself in.

Military alliances with Iran and Venezuela do not fit into this picture at all. Despite the machinations of neoconservatives, Iran and Venezuela are completely irrelevant to China’s goal of taking Taiwan. They have nothing to offer China, and China has no reason to want to defend their regimes.

China also has no reason to risk World War III by sending its military to directly engage US forces over Iran. For this exact same reason, the US has refrained from sending forces to Ukraine, despite calling it an “ally.” It is not a serious argument to claim that the lack of direct intervention by the US in Ukraine or China in Iran indicates that neither side would intervene directly to defend a treaty ally, including Taiwan.

China risked nuclear bombardment by the US in the Korean War because it viewed the Allied march to the Yalu as an immediate and existential threat to its national security.

This framing also misunderstands Chinese foreign policy and influence strategies. China is the largest trading partner for a majority of the world, and has exerted widespread influence due to these economic dependencies and targeted influence techniques. While Iran and Venezuela may be dependent on China, China has no dependencies on these countries, only great profit margins. Whatever becomes of China’s presence in Venezuela, US intervention there has done nothing to erase China’s control of a major port in Perú, its spy station in Argentina, or its deep involvement with organized crime networks in Mexico.

In the Middle East, China has a massive and far-reaching presence in all countries, including advanced military ties with Saudi Arabia, joint training with the UAE military, and a decades of purchases of advanced military technology from Israel. China remains the largest purchaser of oil from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Oman, and the second-largest purchaser for the UAE.

Huawei has set up 5G networks and critical communications infrastructure in all GCC countries, all of whom are also members in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Polling data in the region consistently confirms that a majority of the population in all Middle Eastern countries (aside from Israel) hold far more favorable views of China than the United States.

The US and Israel dragging GCC countries into this war is unlikely to further endear local populations to continue to host US military presence. Rather, the US security umbrella will begin to look more like a liability than an asset, having shattered the underpinnings of the Gulf States’ economies and reputations as safe havens.

The bottom line: China isn’t in the business of fighting overseas wars, and this war is only winning it more friends.

Myth #3: The war is about cutting of China’s supply of oil

This argument claims that because China buys a great deal of Iranian oil, as it does Venezuelan oil, striking Iran cuts off China’s supply of oil, crippling its military and economic ambitions.

This argument makes very little sense for several reasons.

Firstly, it is simply untrue, since the start of the conflict, Iran has actually increased the amount of oil it is exporting, most of which is headed to China, even as it has blocked oil exports from GCC nations due to its control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Rather than demonstrating the US ability to cut off China from Iranian oil, the conflict has seen the phenomenon of ships identifying themselves as Chinese in order to be granted safe passage through the strait.

Even if China ends up losing access to Iranian oil, this does not plunge it into a Cuba-style energy crisis owing to international isolation. China is a wealthy country that is heavily integrated into the world economy, it can simply buy oil and gas on the open market, as it does for most its supply. China also has access to Russian oil and gas, which it can purchase with RMB at advantageous rates, for which Russia has few other buyers.

The Iran War is setting off a global energy crisis which is affecting all nations, yet China may prove one of the most insulated, given its extensive reserves and its all-of-the-above energy approach, which includes coal, wind, solar, and nuclear. China also has deep pockets, and can more than easily outbid most other countries for dwindling global supplies.

What would even be the motivation for trying to cutoff China’s oil imports? The US is not at war with China, nor attempting to blockade it or impose economic sanctions. A sudden oil shortage will certainly will not cripple China’s immediate military readiness, as military needs will take priority over industrial ones.

Is this some 5D chess move to cripple China’s economic growth by limiting energy imports as the key input to China’s industrial production? This also makes little sense. If China faces a serious energy crunch that leads to a massive reduction in industrial capacity, the rest of the world, reliant on Chinese imports, would also be plunged into crisis. This experiment was carried out during the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, and resulted in global prices skyrocketing amidst shortages of essential goods.

Trump himself has also ruled out this theory, telling reporters that it would be an “honor” to keep the oil flowing to China.

What this will do is stress test China’s reliance on imported oil, allowing it to prepare well for an even bigger future shock, such as a full US blockade of Chinese energy imports via the Strait of Malacca, in the case of a war over Taiwan.

In practice, the US is shooting its shot early, weakening any future attempt to pressure China through an energy blockade.

The bottom line: China will weather the global energy crisis just fine, preparing it for future blockades.

Myth #4: Striking Iran intimidates China, deterring an attack on Taiwan

The idea that China is somehow intimidated by the full force of the United States military blasting away at a second-rate military power with a deeply impoverished economy and decrepit military equipment is quite frankly ludicrous. In reality, the Maotai glasses were clinking in Zhongnanhai when news broke of the US-Israeli attack on Iran.

Several versions of this argument have claimed that the US is demonstrating force it can bring against Beijing in a decapitation strike or to wipe out Beijing’s power projection capabilities. This is not a serious argument for two reasons: first of all, a decapitation strike against Beijing would almost certainly lead to retaliatory nuclear strikes against the United States. The world’s nuclear powers have prepared for decapitation scenarios for decades, and developed resilient second-strike capabilities to ensure deterrence through mutually-assured destruction.

More importantly: a nuclear-armed superpower bombing the daylights out of a second-rate regional power that barely has functional electricity and water supplies is the equivalent of a UFC fighter trying to intimidate a rival by beating up a schoolboy.

As one of my college professors used to say: “It’s Bambi versus Godzilla!”

The US and Israel, both nuclear powers with the world’s most advanced weaponry, are fighting as a tag team against a country they have weakened for years both military and economically. While it has sizable arsenals of ballistic missiles and attack drones, Iran’s Air Force—what’s left of it— is composed of a few dozen fighter-jets manufactured in the 1960s and Frankensteined into flying order.

That is all to say, none of this can meaningfully reflect what it would be like for the United States to fight against a peer competitor, one with nearly as advanced air and naval assets, cutting edge electronic warfare capabilities, the world’s largest conventional missile and drone arsenals, and a scale and industrial base unmatched by any.

Some have argued that the US demonstrating powerful new weapons in battle will intimidate China from trying to invade Taiwan. In reality, all the US is doing is revealing battle tactics and possibly even electronic stealth signatures, while expending munitions faster than it can replenish them.

Another repeated claim is that the US attacks on Venezuela and Iran have demonstrated that Russian and Chinese air defense systems do not work. However the evidence belies this, with a report from Domino Theory revealing that claims of Iran deploying or even taking delivery of China’s latest HQ-9B system are completely unsubstantiated. In terms of Russian equipment, reports are mixed whether or not Iran has any remaining S-300 systems, which are already two generations behind Russia’s latest air defense system, and analysts have claimed what air defense systems Iran has are poorly integrated.

And still, the Iranians have now been able to score the first ever successful hit on an F-35, the US’ most advanced stealth fighter.

Some of the strangest forms of this argument have claimed that the US demonstrating its willingness to use military force is itself a deterrent. This argument fails to consider that the US has not taken a break from using military force during the unipolar moment, with long forever wars in the Middle East, air and drone campaigns all over the world, and regime change operations from Libya to Syria. None of these were against great powers with nuclear deterrents. On the contrary, the US overextending itself and depleting resources in numerous wars and military operations around the globe reduces readiness on the Indo-Pacific and has made the American public weary of war and strongly opposed to overseas interventions.

The bottom line: Nuclear superpowers are not easily intimidated by lopsided smackdowns.

Why this war worries me in Taipei

Contrary to widespread fearmongering, China will not attempt to invade Taiwan in 2027. An amphibious operation across the 90-mile wide Taiwan Strait would be the most difficult military operation ever attempted in history, and done by a military that has not seen major combat in half a century. It would risk nuclear escalation with the United States, crater the global economy, and risk ending nearly 80 years of CCP rule in China.

The status quo remains stable because Taiwan, backed by the United States and Japan, retains sufficient deterrent power to ensure China will not attempt such risks.

The Iran War threatens to upend that status quo.

Every hour this war continues plunges America’s East Asian allies into years of vulnerabilities due to dwindling munitions that are being burned at rates far faster than the US and its allies are able to produce replacements. In the first six days of the war alone—which is now going into its fourth week— the US burned through over 300 Tomahawk missiles (TLAMs), which form the backbone of the US Navy’s cruise missile arsenal (they are also used by the Army in Typhon launchers, an increasingly essential land-based deterrent which the US has deployed in the Philippines).

Last year the US manufactured only 72 Tomahawks.

The ratios are similarly terrifying for THAAD interceptors and Patriot missiles, the latter of which are an essential part of Taiwan’s aerial defense strategy. Although there are plans to scale up production of all these systems, with targets of even 1000 Tomahawks per year, production does not scale easily and is rife with bottlenecks. Even worse, China’s stranglehold on rare earths threatens to hand China the production rate limits to the US’ own munition production.

Every week the US and its allies continue to burn through munitions at an unsustainable rate, firing $4 million interceptor missiles to destroy $30,000 drones made in motorcycle shops.

The destruction of billion-dollar radar systems (namely the AN/FPS-132 and AN/TPS-59) by cheap, asymmetric, attritable systems puts Iran on the winning side of the cost-benefit ratio. Replacing these systems requires hundreds of kilograms of gallium, a rare-earth where China controls 99% of the world supply.

A 2023 analysis by CSIS estimated that in a conflict over Taiwan, the US would run out of precision munitions within a single week. That assessment came before years of arms transfers to Ukraine and Israel, the 2025 campaigns against the Houthis and Iran, strikes in Nigeria, the Caribbean & Eastern Pacific, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, and of course Venezuela and the current ongoing war with Iran.

During the First Cold War, the missile gap turned out to be a paranoid fiction. Today, it is rapidly becoming a reality.

This is before even getting into US-produced aircraft using US-produced air-to-air missiles to shoot each other down, resulting in the loss of three F-15Es, and KC-135 Stratotankers crashing into each other, with full crew and hull loss of one aircraft, and severe damage to another (Iran does claim that its militias in Iraq shot down the aircraft).

Then there is the matter of the US arms sales package which has been delayed until after Trump’s planned summit with Xi in Beijing. With the meeting now postponed indefinitely, the question of the arms sale is now also in limbo. Every delay not only sets back Taiwan’s preparedness, but also gives immense fuel to Taiwan’s US-skeptical political opposition to obstruct appropriations for arms sales.

Nobody knows how this war will end. But it will not end well for the United States. The United States has no clearly defined goals, and thus will be unable to achieve a clear victory. If the goal is regime change, this cannot be accomplished without a long and drawn out ground war, which Trump remains broadly opposed to. Iran is therefore currently winning this war by dint of maintaining regime survival and controlling the Strait of Hormuz. Should the United States make the fatal decision of entering a lengthy ground war, it has a pair of 20-year-long regime change wars in the region to base its predictions on. Should it attempt a more limited operation on Kharg Island, as is currently being speculated, it will prove to be Gallipoli, rather than Iwo Jima.

One long-term consequence of a devastating end to this vastly unpopular, senseless, and illegal war, will be a far-reaching backlash to foreign interventionism among the American people. As American casualties continue to mount, so too will the backlash against this and future overseas interventions. With decreased appetite for war and a lack of trust in their leaders to be judicious on the use of force, Americans will choose increasingly restrained and even isolationist leaders. Future leaders on both the Left and the Right will be skeptical of entering into a foreign war, particularly one with costs as high as defending Taiwan, and attempts to do so may engender immense public backlash.

The Endgame

A quick end to this war will not necessarily solve any of these problems. Almost a year ago, the US and Israel declared victory after attacking Iran, and here we are in a protracted war with no clearly defined goals or definition of victory. The problem remains that the US may continue to follow Israel year after year into subsequent wars with Iran, expending munitions and shifting troops away from the Indo-Pacific.

While deterrence holds today and the balance of power still favors the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, this may not be true five years from now. It is not unlikely that the war ends soon, yet the US continues expending munitions in strikes against Iran and regional proxies such as the Houthis on a regular basis. Although Trump officials have stated that Taiwan is at the front of the delivery queue for weapons, it’s hard to imagine this will remain the case as Gulf allies seek to replenish missile stocks they have expended to defend American bases they host. With most of these states having transferred billions of dollars directly to the Trump family, they will most certainly seek to recoup those investments as Iran also rearms and retrenches.

A few years from now, it is easy to imagine a scenario where Iran’s new hardline leadership, having survived a brutal and devastating war, determines that a nuclear deterrent is the only path forward. Developing a nuclear device while rebuilding their drone and missile arsenals deep, deep underground, the US may once again follow Israel into war against Iran. This time, armed with advanced Russian and Chinese air defenses, and sheltered in deep mountain tunnels, Iran would require far more firepower to subdue than this current war, and risk incurring the loss of more allied aircraft.

As the US surges troops and weapons platforms out of the Indo-Pacific, it would quickly burn through already dangerously low munitions stocks. China, having spent the past years preparing for a disruption to Middle Eastern energy imports, producing missiles, drones, and ships at a breakneck pace, and enhancing its global standing, may assess that it has a unique window of opportunity to take Taiwan.

The US, embroiled in another unpopular Middle Eastern quagmire, may then calculate that it does not have sufficient capabilities to stop China’s attack, and choose not to respond, or it may simply lose the war altogether, outgunned and outmatched in the region.

There is no endgame because this is not 5D chess. It’s bughouse, and every piece the US loses in one theater is handing China an advantage in another.

Why I’m Still Hopeful

Despite all the grim developments, there are still rays of hope for Taiwan. Despite Taiwan’s much recent rhetoric about needing to model itself after Israel, it has a lot more to learn from Iran.

Rather than investing a third of its special defense budget on a “T-Dome” air defense system based on an increasingly outdated concept, Taiwan should look to Iran’s “Mosaic Doctrine” of decentralized defense. Iran has survived continuous decapitation strikes, decentralized command and control to maintain increasingly effective retaliatory capabilities, and successfully deterred the US Navy from attempting amphibious attacks through anti-access/area denial (A2AD) capabilities in the Persian Gulf. It has done all of this with essentially no Navy, no Air Force, and on the cheap, using attritable munitions mass-produced for $30,000 a piece to deter and destroy systems costing hundreds of millions.

For Taiwan, those are the critical elements it needs to master in order to survive a Chinese first strike and deter an amphibious invasion.

There are signs Taiwanese officials are wising to the problem. Despite initially foolhardy comments from the Foreign Ministry welcoming the war (which began with the killing of over 170 schoolgirls in a US strike on an elementary school) for helping the Iranian people to “enjoy freedom, democracy and human rights,” Taiwanese security officials are now leaking concerns about protracted war to international media, observing that the unsustainable attrition of munitions is actively eroding deterrence in the Taiwan strait.

The Lai administration’s move to restart nuclear power is an important first step towards energy security, and recent investments in the domestic drone industry lay the groundwork for enhancing Taiwan’s deterrence capabilities. Recent polling data indicates that a majority of Taiwanese are willing to fight for their country even if the US does not come to their aid.

Still, it is unlikely Taiwan can effectively deter China without a credible US security deterrent. It remains to be seen if Taiwan can become a porcupine faster than the US can hollow out its own arsenals. The urgency is now stronger than it has ever been.

The cost of this war will be borne chiefly by the Iranian people, but it may ultimately cost the Taiwanese as well.

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So it was absolutely shocking when he stood before a crowd of Taipei’s foreign policy elite at the annual Yushan Forum, following a public audience with the President of Taiwan, and declared his support for “the unification of the Chinese people,” or subsuming Taiwan into China, which it has never been part of.

Declaring that “Chinese nations have to unite, but Taiwan should lead the unification of the Chinese people,” Mr. Walesa parroted the propaganda of long-dead dictator Chiang Kai-shek, who killed 30,000 Taiwanese and imposed the world’s longest period of martial law in order to assert his vision that Taiwan was part of a singular Chinese nation that must one day be unified. It is also the language of Xi Jinping, who has declared that “reunification is unstoppable.”

If Mr. Walesa had actually bothered to ask Taiwanese people how they felt about their identity or whether they wanted to join China or not, he would have discovered only 7.2% support “unification,” and a mere 2.5% of the country identifies primarily as “Chinese.”

The Yushan Forum, organized annually by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the government-funded Taiwan Asia Exchange Foundation, is meant to promote Taiwan’s ties with South and Southeast Asia under the New Southbound Policy Plus. It is considered, along with the Ketagalan Forum, to be one of the highest-level foreign policy meetings in Taiwan.

Taiwan’s Central News Agency attempted to somewhat paper over the embarrassment by mistranslating his comments as “Chinese-speaking areas must unite,” although the ultra-green Liberty Times reports his remarks as “the Chinese nation must unite,” (中華民族必須統一).

Formosa Review can confirm that Walesa, speaking through a Polish-Mandarin interpreter, referred to the Chinese nation, not language. His original remarks in Polish cannot be confirmed at this time, and may never be, given that Walesa’s dialect is famously so irregular that an entire Master’s dissertation has been written on how difficult it is to interpret for him. New sourcing reveals his comments in the original Polish state: “Chinese nations must unite” (Narody chińskie muszą się zjednoczyć).

Ironically wearing a Ukrainian flag pin, one must wonder if Mr. Walesa truly believes that areas speaking the same or similar languages must unify. Surely, he must also support the unification of the Donbas and Crimea with Russia? And why should China stop at Taiwan? Certainly Singapore, major Malaysian cities, and a few chunks of Vietnam must join the Chinese nation-state as well. For good measure, Flushing, Queens could be thrown in too.

Poland fought long and hard for its independence, both as a nation state in its own right, and for true sovereignty against the yoke of Soviet oppression. But when Mr. Walesa was languishing in Communist jails, should he have taken solace in the fact that Poland was better off under the domination of a fellow Slavic-speaking nation?

Mr. Walesa’s qualification that democratic “Taiwan should lead the unification” makes no more sense than stating that democratic Ukraine should lead unification with Russia. Ukraine is an independent nation state that doesn’t want to be part of Russia, and Taiwan is another independent nation state that doesn’t want to be part of China. While both share cultural and historical links with their neighbors, the idea that democracy would be a saving grace belies the very nature of democracy: majority rule over the minority. No nation would willingly give up its sovereignty to any foreign state just because it embraces democracy.

The fundamental dispute between Taiwan and China is not about democracy versus authoritarianism, capitalism versus communism, or lèsè versus lājī. It is a dispute of national identity.

When Presidents Trump and Zelensky had a famously contentious White House meeting last year, Mr. Walesa wrote Mr. Trump a letter castigating him for berating Mr. Zelensky, expressing his “horror and disgust.” Why did he not instead suggest that Zelensky, a native Russian speaker, lead efforts to unify with Russia?

Despite seven high-profile visits to Taiwan over 30 years, Lech Walesa has never bothered to learn basics of the country, its people, and its long struggle for democracy and self-rule. For more than a hundred years, against the Manchus, the Japanese, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the Taiwanese people have bravely fought for freedom and democracy, often paying the ultimate price. It is a story the people of Poland should find familiar.

Whether by intention or ignorance, Mr. Walesa has handed Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party a propaganda gift by repeating their narratives nearly word for word.

Given the high price Taiwanese have paid, and are willing to pay, for their freedom, why did the Taiwanese government give such a large platform to someone who used it to insult the dignity and desires of the Taiwanese? Even worse, Formosa Review can confirm that a sum of as much as half a million Taiwanese dollars (approximately $15,000 USD) was awarded by the Foreign Ministry as a speaking fee.

High-level sources in Taipei confirm that the invitation to Mr. Walesa was at the explicit request of Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung, who came to know Walesa in his previous visits to Taipei, particularly under the administration of President Chen Shui-bian, under whom Mr. Lin served as Deputy Secretary-General to the President.

Foreign Minister Lin also happens to be married to the heiress of the Chi Mei Group, which has extensive investments in Poland, and he has made frequent visits to the country during his tenure as foreign minister, in both official and unofficial capacity. His official activities may all be above board, but they go a long way to explaining why a long-retired Polish politician was paid handsomely to address a forum on strengthening Indo-Pacific partnerships.

It is not the first time Taiwan has erred so spectacularly: previous invitations and exorbitant speaking fees to disgraced former leaders such as Boris Johnson (who also seemed to think Taiwan and China were one nation) and Liz Truss have garnered Taiwan far more embarrassment than support.

But it should be the last.

CORRECTIONS:

On Mar 17 this article was updated to include the original Polish remarks.

On Mar 18 this article was updated to reflect that Walesa’s presidency ended in 1995, not 1996.

It is a cliché to say there are two Indias, nonetheless I find myself struggling for a more cohesive heuristic to capture the dualities I experienced on a recent visit to attend the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. The AI Impact Summit was the fourth of series of major international summits on AI, held in Bletchley Park, Seoul, and Paris, drawing delegations from hundreds of countries, including dozens of heads of state and titans of the tech industry, this would be the first for the Global South.

On the one hand, there is a vision of a new India as an emerging global power, not just driven by, but driving rapid innovation in technology and AI. This India is characterized by the Aadhaar biometric ID system, which has efficiently distributed welfare to India’s large unbanked population; or the Universal Payments Interface which has now surpassed Visa as the world’s largest digital payments platform, all without fees. This is an India that seeks to be a model for the developing world, and to be seen as one of the world’s leading great powers. Let’s call this India “Bharat,” because that is what the government seems to want to call it.

On the other hand, there is the India that emerged from the shackles of British colonial oppression. One of the world’s ancient and great civilizations reshaped over centuries bureaucratically and physically by the straightjacket of the English administrative state, this is the India that has the world’s largest population in extreme poverty and a bureaucracy more Byzantine than Byzantium.

It is also the India that has spawned the world’s most effective non-violent freedom fighters, democratized live-saving medicines for the entire world, developed nuclear weapons, and become the world’s largest and most successful ongoing experiment in multilingual pluralistic democracy. This is the India typified by the architecture of Edwin Lutyens that characterizes New Delhi’s walled bungalows and rarefied social clubs, and the choked streets of capitalist India that run through them. Let’s call this one “India.”

India sent off a generation of highly-educated, hardworking, English-speaking migrants to the West, where they went on to lead the world’s most important tech firms, become the highest-earning ethnic group in the United States (this distinction alternates annually with Taiwanese Americans), and raise children who would attain high positions of elected political power.

Bharat now hopes to entice them back.

I spent the week traversing between India and Bharat, seeking to understand where India was going, how AI was transforming the country, and how the world was perceiving India’s ascendance on the world stage. For me, also top of mind were the important questions of how India was thinking about China’s strategic challenge, what opportunities lay to strengthen India’s relations with Taiwan, and how it might respond to a Taiwan contingency.

Well-organized Chaos

The chaos of the first days of the AI Summit has been well-documented in other outlets, including security protocols so strict that most electronic devices, including laptops, wireless earbuds, phone chargers, and even car keys were officially banned from the tech summit. Many approved attendees were turned away after waiting for many hours. Having been well-warned of this by local colleagues, I skipped the first two days.

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I arrived at the Bharat Mandapam convention center on the third day, toting wireless earbuds, phone charger, and a power bank for good measure. Hoping for the best, I proceeded through the queue, and after passing through and setting off the metal detector, was directed straight in with a light pat on the shoulder and no examination of my metal objects. They even forgot to scan my QR code! Was I in Bharat or India?

The scale of the expo itself was truly impressive. Bharat Mandapam is one of the largest convention centers I have ever been to, and every hall was packed full of booths and exhibitions showcasing developments in AI of every shape. Every Indian state had pavilions showcasing real-life use cases for using AI to improve the delivery of services, in-line with the summit’s theme of “Welfare for all, happiness of all.”

AI is rapidly transforming the state’s relationship with its citizens, and in India, this is viewed primarily as for the better. In one session, a panelist from southern India recounted the implementation of an AI system to assess post-typhoon crop damage for calculating relief payments to farmers. Satellite images are analyzed by AI that immediately assesses the relief benefit owed, which is instantly transferred directly to the farmer via Aadhaar.

Under the previous system, damages were laboriously assessed by sending government inspectors to each individual plot around the state, where they rated the damage based on their personal assessment on a numbered scale. This data was all then compiled centrally and relief payments assessed and sent out through traditional methods, a process that could take weeks or even months.

But the speed is not even the most impressive part. According to the panelist, under the previous system, approximately 17 crores (170 million INR or ~1.8 million USD) in relief payments were issued each season. Under the new AI satellite system, this was reduced to only 4 crores (40 million INR or ~434,000 USD), all without a single complaint from the farmers.

Without a single complaint.

Even if the AI relief system is functioning with 100% accuracy, if you reduce payments to a segment of the population by more than 75%, people are going to complain that there is a lot less money in their pockets under this new system.

The most plausible explanation to me is that the balance of 13 crores (~1.4 million USD) was simply a measurement of corruption in the system. With the traditional system so reliant on the individual observations of hundreds of inspectors, it is easy to imagine vast corruption, both centralized and decentralized, where these numbers are being inflated with corrupt officials pocketing the balance. That difference being due to corruption would explain the lack of complaints: farmers are still getting the same amount of relief, and corrupt officials are unlikely to make a formal complaint about losing their source of graft.

Corruption is a serious problem in India, as in most other countries, with estimates of as much as $50 billion USD siphoned away annually. If AI can truly put a dent in this figure, it could be truly transformative for innovation, productivity, and accountability in the Indian economy.

Indian AI-enabled Defense Tech

In the exposition halls I visited the Ministry of Defence pavilion, where various new AI-enabled hardware and software products were being demonstrated. There, I came across the following product from one of India’s defense research labs: an AI-enabled helmet with a real-time Mandarin to Hindi translator.

The development team touted the successes of the device in initial tests on the borders with both China and Nepal (there is a Nepali version). The dictionary-sized device is meant for use by troops posted in poorly marked border regions, where Indian and Chinese patrols often cross paths, sometimes quite violently. The device, which works offline, is meant to eliminate communication issues between the two sides, as well as to allow the Indian side to understand communications between and among Chinese troops within earshot.

In such situations where nuances in communication between frontline troops can lead to outbreaks of violence or effective changes to the status quo, clear communication and understanding of the other side is essential. Mandarin is of course an infernally complex and nuanced language, and specific phrases in a political or military context often carry great weight.

Naturally I wanted to understand how accurate the system was, and if it was developed with not just linguistic accuracy, but specific knowledge of Mandarin phrases used in political and military contexts. I spoke with the development team, who assured me it was more than 80% accurate.

That would be quite impressive, roughly matching Google Translate’s offline accuracy for Mandarin, a tool built on one of the world’s most powerful LLMs and refined by hundreds of native Mandarin speakers.

When I asked the team about their use of Mandarin speakers in product development, they informed me that they had used Mandarin-speaking contractors, but were limited given that they could only use Indians who spoke Mandarin as a second language, as hiring native speakers from China was naturally prohibited.

Indians are probably the most multilingual people on the planet, but unfortunately Mandarin is not commonly taught in India, and very few people speak it to a high level. In conversations in policy circles in New Delhi, I am frequently given the number that no more than a few dozen people in the entire country are functionally fluent in Mandarin. I would be skeptical that the Indian contractors this lab hired not only had fluent Mandarin, but a nuanced knowledge of the specific military and technical terms used by the PLA.

After sharing with the team my background in Taiwanese defense think tanks, I raised the prospect of collaboration with Taiwanese, who in addition to being native speakers of Mandarin, have firsthand experience of daily military encounters with the PLA. Taiwan and India both face regular grayzone encounters with the PLA (although Taiwan’s fronts are maritime and aerial, while India’s is largely on land), and have similar challenges defending their territory while working to deescalate encounters. Surely among the many opportunities for Taiwan and India to share experiences and collaborate, Mandarin expertise is an easy entry point?

But you see, one of the exhibitors explained to me, we can’t work with anyone in China, it’s a security risk. I told him that’s precisely why Taiwan is a great and secure partner to work with. His response: But isn’t Taiwan part of China too?

I don’t blame this technical development team for not knowing the very basic fact that Taiwan is independent of China. It’s a small, faraway country, and one that has not done enough to explain itself to the world, particularly in countries such as India. Often the importance of publicizing Taiwan’s independence is downplayed in favor of “more practical” opportunities for collaboration, but we see here that this failure of public diplomacy indeed impedes very critical opportunities for collaboration and stronger ties, including in the security domain.

Moseying back to the main hall from the exposition was a transition from Bharat to India. Halfway to the main building, gates had been suddenly stood up, with just a small two-meter-wide opening through which guards were only allowing traffic in one direction, leaving no way to actually return to the main hall. Arriving at the chaotic throngs trying to surge in each way, I found a single guard manning the opening, shouting directions only in Hindi, a language few international attendees would understand, to those trying to return to the main hall. Eventually, a path was found, a single-file passage between two rows of metal barriers over a muddy field, after which there was a lengthy walk to approach the hall from the other direction. Returning indoors, I attended a session where a panelist gleefully exclaimed how AI had broken language barriers to such a degree that government information could be communicated seamlessly in individual village dialects spoken by only a few hundred or few thousand native speakers.

For all these organizational shortcomings, it is important to note the importance of the event to Indians themselves, the majority of attendees and beneficiaries of the summit. Exorbitant costs, distances, and visas often preclude Indians from attending major international summits in Europe and North America. Despite all the shortcomings, bringing a major international summit to India is a significant success. That being said, this makes it all the more important that India organizes summits well enough to ensure it can continue to draw major international attendees and speakers to return.

AI for All?

After the summit I attended a dinner reception organized by the Observer Research Foundation, the Gates Foundation, Carnegie India, and the EkStep Foundation, featuring former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and several other notables including the head of the Gates Foundation in India (Bill himself made a hasty exit from the summit due to prior associations with a certain Caribbean island…), and former Trump AI advisor-turned Trump critic, , whose Summit reflection on his Substack, Hyperdimensional, is well worth reading.

The dinner was themed AI for All: Reimagining Global Cooperation and followed a daylong South-South workshop bringing together participants from the Global South to ensure they would not be left behind in the AI discussion, in-line with India’s positioning on hosting the summit. In scene setter remarks, Sunak articulated an inescapable through line of the summit, readily apparent to anyone regularly passing between emerging and developed economies: in the developed and industrialized West, there is incredible rank pessimism and outright fear of AI, from workers to intellectuals, fear of looming job losses, fear of an erosion of students’ critical reasoning skills, fear of the destruction of intellectual property protections, fear of global annihilation by artificial general intelligence.

In the developing world, or emerging economies, however, there is incredible optimism for AI’s revolutionary abilities to transform citizens’ lives. Part of this is the nature of the developmental state, in developing countries, there tends to be more optimism, or at least a stronger view of the responsibility of the state to transform citizens’ lives, a concept largely rejected in the capitalist West. Part of this is also the democratizing nature of AI, which has already led to the revolutionary changes in access to citizen services outlined previously.

But how democratizing is AI? Global compute remains dominated by the United States and China, the only AI powers capable of producing frontier models, and cutting edge chips remain controlled by a US-led hardware alliance including the Netherlands, Japan, and Taiwan. The South-South dialogue was meant to ensure Global South countries have input into the future of AI, but without hyperscalers, frontier models of their own, or access to next-generation chips, it’s hard to see how any emerging economies will shape AI’s future.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu” at Davos this year, referring to geopolitical hard power. The same applies to AI: if you’re not building frontier models, you’re may just be the dataset.

Welfare for All

Frontier AI models were the last thing on my mind as I sat for nearly two hours unmoving in a congested lane returning to New Delhi from South Delhi’s Chhatarpur district; mild-weathered February is Delhi’s wedding season and Chhatarpur’s idyllic farmhouses offer green expanses only five miles from central Delhi. Yet on the road I witnessed a complete collapse of the traffic system, moving two kilometers in two hours on a major thoroughfare.

As we inched towards a major intersection, the source of the stoppage became clear, a single traffic light would turn green for exactly fifteen seconds, before immediately turning red again despite no cars having budged from the stoplight. With cars pouring in illegal directions from every which lane, there was simply not enough time in 15 seconds for any car to react and inch forward before traffic resumed perpendicularly.

Setting aside enforcement issues of traffic laws in India, from a technical perspective, this is a trivial problem to solve algorithmically. Running a traffic light on a timer may work in a rural area or a time predating the integrated circuit, but integrating even a single sensor to optimize traffic flow is trivial and can be solved by a first year computer science student, even without the most basic of AI-directed algorithmic assistance.

As we sat unmoving for hours, pollution from idling diesel cars fouling the lungs and watering the eyes, commuters lost precious hours with their families, goods being transported interstate faced market delays or spoilage, long-distance truckers grew fatigued and weary, and cattle and children alike wandered dangerously among idling traffic.

These were intolerable conditions to any citizenry, an abject failure of democratic governance to respond to basic needs of working and monied classes alike. In India, traffic is democratizing.

Well, almost.

I could not help but think back to my attempted departure from New Delhi’s swanky Oberoi Hotel following the AI for All dinner earlier in the week. Following the conclusion of the dinner, I attempted to order an Uber, only for the driver to inform me he was stopped at a roadblock two miles away from the hotel. With no signs of improvement, and a failed attempted escape through the staff entrance, the crowd began to swell in the hotel driveaway as private drivers, taxis, and Ubers were all sealed off from a two-mile radius in the center of New Delhi.

VIP movement sir, please wait. And wait I did, sequestered in a five-star hotel with several heads of state, foreign government ministers and deputies, and a good portion of New Delhi’s diplomatic corps. Apparently none of us were VIP enough to be allowed to leave the hotel.[1]

For two hours I waited in the brisk New Delhi evening, unable to leave, with no way of knowing when the VIPs would finally relent and return the streets to the people. Inside the gilded Oberoi, heads of state and tech executives hailed Bharat’s advances and Global South attendees embraced a new non-Western approach to AI. Yet outside I felt I was in Ashgabat.

What hope is there that a simple traffic light will be upgraded when those responsible for it have never stopped for one?

A country whose leaders isolate themselves from the daily realities of their people, particularly those of the middle class, will eventually find themselves in a crisis of legitimacy with the very people they purport to serve. I am no expert in Indian politics, but this is clearly what befell the Congress Party after many decades, and I have no doubt the BJP will eventually fall into the same trap.

Looking East

On my last day in New Delhi I attended a talk by Professor Yan Xuetong, of Tsinghua University and one of China’s leading IR scholars. Normally far more nuanced than most Chinese academics, Dr. Yan can be insightful on the mood in Beijing, even as he shirks the thornier questions around Beijing’s regional and global challenges.

Dr. Yan’s talk “Trump’s Challenge to the Global Order,” drew a large crowd and generated much interest among New Delhi’s strategic thinkers. I thought he made a good-natured effort at attempting to win over Indian thinkers, criticizing Trump’s leadership of the United States while highlighting the importance of moral and spiritual leadership, predicting a recentering of the world away from Europe and towards Asia.

At the end of the day, Dr. Yan failed to win over anyone in that room because Indians know the challenge posed by China is greater than any damage the US could ever do to India. For all focus on US/China confrontation, it remains true that India has been one of the few modern countries to face direct military conflict with China, as well as the one most recently to have engaged in direct combat with China’s most advanced weaponry. Independent India’s sole strategic defeat against an external adversary has been its war with China in 1962, and last year’s conflict with Pakistan (Operation Sindoor) saw Pakistan testing advanced Chinese weaponry against India.

While India is unlikely to ever align its policy with the United States as its East Asian allies do, structural reasons will ensure that India and China will remain adversaries on multiple fronts. This structural competition however, should not be viewed as a constraint, but rather as a freeing of India to engage in an independent foreign policy unconstrained by any great power.

This has led to an India that is able to have security relationships with Russia and the United States, Israel and Iran, Tajikistan and Vietnam, Australia and Japan.

Why then not also Taiwan?

I have long argued that India can brush up against China’s so-called redlines on Taiwan in a way almost no other nation can. Not only does India have no official “One-China policy,” but it has a delicate strategic balance with China that almost no other nation has. I view India and China as having four main fronts for confrontation:

1. The disputed and undemarcated India/China border in the Himalayas.

2. The India/Pakistan conflict, where China supports Pakistan militarily.

3. Competition for influence in India’s South Asian neighbors (Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and the Maldives).

4. Power projection into the Indian Ocean and Strait of Malacca.

Each one of these fronts operates on its own highly calibrated logic, and all but one include the agency of third states that are highly inclined towards de-escalation.

That is to say, Pakistan is not going to stir up border conflict at China’s behest if India engages in security dialogue with Taiwan. Bangladesh is not going to elect pro or anti-Indian leaders based on India’s trade with Taiwan. China is not going to be more or less able to secure shipping lanes in the Strait of Malacca whether or not the Indian Navy transits the Taiwan Strait or conducts joint exercises in the South China Sea.

Why then, are India/Taiwanese relations extremely underdeveloped, not merely in security, where both sides face the same ultimate threat, but in trade, academic, cultural, and people-to-people exchanges? The basic problem stems from a mutual lack of understanding on both sides. Taiwan is a small and far off place that has few Indian tourists or expatriates, making it less prominent in India compared with Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian states.

Taiwan has its own island insularity that leaves it lacking expertise and curiosity on far off states. It knows Japan well, it has extensive ties in Southeast Asia, but India seems a far-off place beyond the mountains, and stereotypes predominantly color Taiwanese views of India.

In conversations with officials in New Delhi, I cannot escape the truth that there is simply an order of magnitude missing to how the two Asian democracies appear to each other. Despite interest in both sides on improving the relationship, the lack of a direct flight is such a basic impediment to even the simplest exchanges. It is often faster to fly to Europe from Taiwan than to India, and both sides currently lack enough talents with suffienct linguistic and historical fluency in both countries to foster a warming of ties, whether academic, business, or even tourism.

The coming arrival of 1,000 migrant workers from India to Taiwan may be just the start that is needed. As conflict roils the Gulf countries, Taiwan may well emerge as a place of great interest to India. The potential areas for cooperation between India and Taiwan are numerous: beyond migrant labor to well-managed tourism, educational exchanges, track 1.5 foreign policy and security dialogues, skilled manufacturing, and of course the AI industry.

This will simply take time to happen. When it happens, it will happen if the same conditions are created as were in the West, the Gulf, and Southeast Asia: there is a need to nurture a generation who are comfortable in both countries and elevated to positions of prominence to make true durable cooperation happen.

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[1] I will note the Oberoi manager did offer me an exorbitantly priced house limousine for a one-way trip

One and a half years later, Trump has inverted his position, turning to aggressive military force against Iran, which has not proven to be a serious adversary to the United States. At the same time, we have seen how his threat of tariffs against China, now borne out, has proven to be a weak deterrent of anything, particularly given China’s stranglehold on rare earths. As the US expends materiel ahead of replacement rates against Iran and relocates forces from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East, the Second Trump Administration seems to be sliding into the very fallacy I warned Vice President Harris against.

How Trump and Harris Both Misread Taiwan

Originally published in the Wall Street Journal, October 28, 2024 (print edition)

In James Taranto’s Weekend Interview “Trump Tangles With the Journal’s Editors” (Oct. 19), the former president wouldn’t commit to using military force to defend Taiwan, instead emphasizing his preference for tariffs. Such an aversion to military force, while sometimes tactful, misreads the security situation in the Taiwan Strait. China has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to taking the island nation by force.

In that event, even stringent economic sanctions would be useless. Beijing will have already “priced in” the attendant costs of an invasion or blockade, which itself would create world-wide economic disaster due to the choking off or destruction of Taiwan’s advanced semiconductor industry.

Economic sanctions are mostly toothless when used against a nation pursuing what it considers to be a core security interest. The levies didn’t deter Russia from its occupation of Crimea in 2014 or in Ukraine since 2022. Nor did they dislodge Myanmar’s genocidal military junta from power or halt Iran’s military engagements in the Middle East. The U.S. trade blockade on Cuba has produced no results in more than 60 years. Threats of sanctions didn’t prevent China from abrogating the Sino-British Joint Declaration or running roughshod over Hong Kong.

China has spent years building an alternative global economic order to weather aggressively enforced Western sanctions. Tariffs would be even more useless, raising prices on U.S. consumers rather than inflicting costs on Beijing.

Mr. Trump isn’t alone: Vice President Harris has also made comments that reflect a poor reading of the Chinese threat. Her recent assertion that Iran is America’s greatest adversary is risible. The Iranian regime may threaten the Middle East, but its impoverished country has a gross domestic product orders of magnitude smaller than that of the U.S. Iran’s Air Force is aging, dependent on fossilized F-14s, and the state evidently isn’t even capable of safely transporting its own president.

When asked if she would defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion, Ms. Harris insisted that “we need to make sure we maintain a ‘One China’ policy,” rather than continuing President Joe Biden’s pledge to use military force to repel an unprovoked invasion.

The fantasy, beloved by Europeans, that economic sanctions or tariffs would deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan must end. Only a credible security deterrent backed by American military might will provide a meaningful deterrent against Beijing’s belligerence.

The Post has truncated my letter for space, so I am publishing the full original text here for my subscribers:

Jim Geraghty’s panic over Taiwan is misplaced. The recently announced trade deal between the United States and East Asia’s most talked-about island nation heralds closer ties between the two countries, further integrating their supply chains, economies, and business communities, even as both sides continue to lack clarity over details of the pact’s implementation.

That Mr. Geraghty attributes much of Taiwan’s deterrent power against a Chinese invasion to the world’s dependency on TSMC’s advanced microchips is a result of years of misguided messaging by Taiwan’s government and business community. As he points out, this has led to prominent political figures, such as the likely next governor of Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy, to call for stepping back commitments to defending Taiwan after achieving “semiconductor independence.”

In reality, the US has committed itself to maintaining Taiwan’s independence decades before Taiwanese engineers even dreamed of semiconductor fabs. Then, as now, the US recognized the importance of defending Taiwan as part of the “First Island Chain,” which contains China’s military power projection capabilities while defending our allies and homeland.

TSMC’s increased production overseas is not eroding Taiwan’s global edge, it is enhancing it, integrating Taiwan’s many suppliers up and down the value chain into the US and other allied economies, while enhancing contacts across government, business, and society. None of its overseas facilities are anywhere near being able to match Taiwan’s production of the most cutting-edge microchips, let alone compete on next-generation fabrication.

Mr. Geraghty posits instead that America’s goal should be driven by a desire to protect Taiwanese democracy. This is a noble goal, but ignores the decades of US support for the authoritarian KMT regime of Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan, which oppressed Taiwanese desires for self-rule in their own state under their own name.

After the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there appeared a moment for this rhetoric of global democratic solidarity, fully embraced by the Biden administration. Taiwanese political leaders repeated these adages, finding new embrace in Europe based on common democratic values.

As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stated bluntly in Davos this week: “we are no longer relying on just the strength of our values, but also on the value of our strength.”

2026 no longer looks like a world where such appeals to democracy or altruistic solidarity will have any cachet in the capitals of the great powers. Taiwan is fortunate that the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy articulates a clear and evergreen strategy for its defense, recognizing that the Second Island Chain, which includes the US territory of Guam, will be indefensible if the First Island Chain falls.

The “silicon shield” looks unsturdy because it never was. The sooner we abandon this false narrative, the sooner those of us who care about Taiwan’s continued freedom can make the case to the American people why we must sacrifice for that beautiful island nation.

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Following my trip, I have just published a column in the The Guam Daily Post, the leading print publication on Guam. I am republishing the full text here for my subscribers, but I encourage you to visit the Post’s website for further insights on Guam:

On the ties that bind Guam and Taiwan

Originally published in the Guam Daily Post, December 19, 2025 (print & online)

“When I see Taiwanese indigenous dancers, I see my CHamoru brothers,” a high-ranking Guam official tells me, as the conversation shifts from intermediate range missiles and air raid preparations to the magnificent people who live at the very center of the first and second island chains.

The distance from Taiwan to Guam was once as short as it was vast. Millenia ago, the ancestors of the CHamoru set out from Taiwan on outrigger canoes on a vast journey of thousands of miles, reading waves by starlight. Yet the distance between the island peoples was short as could be, one Austronesian nation across the blue continent.

Over the centuries, both islands have been coveted by the same empires: Spanish, Dutch or German, Japanese, each leaving their mark - for better or worse - and contributing to a diverse cosmopolitan population. Both ultimately ended up spending the 20th century fighting for democracy under new colonial arrangements: Taiwan under the Republic of China rump regime, and Guam as an unincorporated territory of the United States. While longstanding issues of identity and sovereignty remain unresolved in both societies, Pax Americana has allowed for the flourishing of liberty, free expression, cultural revival, and freedom from domination by authoritarian powers.

Today, these values and progress are threatened, as China’s growing strength and power-projection capabilities lay clear its ambitions to dominate the Indo-Pacific and expel the United States from the region. Any claims that China intends to rise peacefully or merely secure its economic development are belied by its designating of an intermediate range missile as the “Guam killer,” and its building of full-scale replicas of Taiwan’s presidential office building at military training sites.

As China reaches across the globe to threaten Pacific fishing stocks, conduct dangerous live-fire exercises off the coast of Australia, open illegal police stations in the continental United States and Europe, and build illegal island bases in the West Philippine Sea, the importance of containing China’s expansionism has become a clear priority for the United States and her allies, generating renewed interest in Guam and Taiwan as the “tip of the spear” in the Indo-Pacific.

Yet these island homes are far more than simply logistical waystations or would be battlefields protecting freedom for the world beyond. Yes, they are, and the free world owes these islanders an enormous debt for bearing their geographical burden. They are also enormously special places with rich culture and global importance that have much to offer the world, but are often held back by a world that views them merely as militarized outposts and geopolitical pawns.

Guam and Taiwan have opportunity to demonstrate how US and Taiwanese cooperation can lead the way in defending prosperity in a new era. Already, Taiwanese investment in AI-driven aquaponics on Guam are leveraging Taiwan’s technological and agricultural strengths to bring fresh and affordable food to the island. Future technology transfers of Taiwanese advanced fish-farming techniques have the potential to restore Guam’s historical fisheries sector while reducing dependencies on frozen imports.

A great deal of these successes are a result of successful subnational diplomacy by the Taiwanese, who made the wise decision in 2020 to reopen their representative office - a consulate in all but name, recognizing that building ties with the people of Guam was an essential strategic step to strengthening relationships with both the United States and the Pacific region. Indigenous cultural exchanges have restored ancient connections between the two islands, and Guam’s inaugural participation this past week in the World Indigenous Traditional Games in Kaohsiung, Taiwan marks an important milestone.

Guam and Taiwan are united not just by their shared past, but by their shared future. Growing threats to energy security, undersea cable connectivity, and increasingly powerful typhoons all make building resilient societies a shared concern. Guam should join Taiwan’s Global Cooperation and Training Framework (GCTF) as a subnational member, which addresses these issues and more through shared cooperation and collaboration across regions.

Guam could host the next iteration of the GCTF’s International Austronesian Languages Revitalization Forum, setting the stage for future Guam-based educational collaboration and exchanges. While existing educational exchanges largely focus on indigenous issues and agriculture, future academic exchanges should include security studies as an area of critical importance in the Pacific region.

Despite the presence of geostrategic security questions in everyday life on Guam, it remains underdeveloped in security studies, particularly when compared to Hawai’i. Guam should leverage its reputation as a well-established training center for the region that is able to attract elites and talent from Pacific islands states that are foreign policy priorities for Taiwan to invite Taiwanese investment in Guam’s education system. Just as Taiwan’s Ministry of Education supports numerous Taiwan Studies programs around the world, it should be enticed to support an Indo-Pacific security studies program at the University of Guam, which could issue joint degrees or certificates with a leading Taiwanese university.

That the future of the free world depends on strong ties between Guam and Taiwan is not an overstatement. At a time when China is sowing distrust of the United States within Taiwan, the people of Guam have the opportunity to show a genuine brotherly connection with their Taiwanese cousins. This trust is foundational to a mutually beneficial relationship as both societies navigate the turbulent future, seeing each other not just as comrades in arms, but as partners in economic, educational, and cultural development for all.

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Recent remarks by Prime Minister Takaichi remind us that despite a Taiwan contingency being a “survival threatening situation” for Japan, the role of Japan is a difficult one, given that it will not be the main driver of either initiating or responding to war in the Taiwan strait.

That being said, Japan has immense agency, and Japanese strategists would do well to consider the following takeaways from our simulation, which incorporated advanced AI decision-making platforms:

1. Japan must work hand-in-glove with its allies, the United States and Taiwan, to mount an effective deterrence strategy, and should that fail, a winning battle plan against China along the First Island Chain. The US’ newly released 2025 National Security Strategy reflects this in its call for Japan and South Korea to “increase defense spending, with a focus on [new] capabilities— necessary to deter adversaries and protect the First Island Chain.” I predict that, as in our simulation, Korea will not be particularly interested in risking attacks on the homeland to protect allies in the First Island Chain, unlike Japan. China’s sanctioning today of Shigeru Iwasaki, Japan’s highest-ranking military officer, who is now advising Taiwan’s Executive Yuan, indicates that China is extremely afraid of deeper and closer coordination between Japan and Taiwan, who are already “Geopolitical BFFs.”

2. Dual-use infrastructure, particularly in Okinawa and the Ryukyus, was essential to mounting an effective defense of Taiwan. Runways in the region place the Taiwan Strait within the combat radius of JASDF and US fighter aircraft, allowing allied forces to respond within minutes to Chinese aggression and run continuous sorties. Increasing the number of available runways and combat infrastructure in these islands enhances deterrence through survivability, which in turn reduces the possibility of armed conflict. An early deployment of intermediate range missiles to the Yaeyama islands is a critical signal to the Chinese that any attempt to use force against Taiwan will be met with lethal Allied resistance.

3. One of the most important investments Japan has made in recent months is committing to invest $3-500 million in undersea cable repair ships. Prior to the breakout of conflict, China initiated grayzone operations to sever undersea cables not merely around Taiwan, but also those connecting Taiwan and vital Pacific Islands to the rest of the world. Japan, like Taiwan, remains heavily dependent on undersea cables for secure communications with its allies, and breaks in this network are intended to delay and distort information sharing during a crisis.

A critical conceptual understanding of the famous 台灣有事就是日本有事 “a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency” statement is that China’s playbook against Taiwan is also intended for use against Japan— specifically in Okinawa, which would be rendered indefensible by the fall of Taiwan. China’s spreading of disinformation around historical claims, its use of power projection to simulate blockade or interdiction capabilities, and ability to sever critical communications infrastructure is a playbook it has been developing for Taiwan and now is extending further into the East and South China Seas. Indeed, Japan should understand that 台灣有事就是沖繩有事, a Taiwan contingency presents an existential Okinawa contingency.

Deploying effective countermeasures to protect Taiwan will be essential for the defense of Japan, the Philippines, and Pacific Island states (including the US territory of Guam), which are all highly vulnerable to these measures. Effective war game simulations will take these factors into account, and should include relevant teams from those countries, and prepare localized AAR (after-action review) to prepare regional strategists and officials.

Assembling his Cuomintang forces on Whitehall Street before boarding the last ferry to Staten Island, Generalissimo Cuomo vowed to “recover the mainland,” assuring his followers that the retreat would merely be temporary. “We will protect our capitalist traditions and way of life until the inevitable collapse of Mandamania’s Islamo-Marxist regime, and one day lead New Yorkers back into prosperity.”

In the hold of Generalissimo Cuomo’s ferry is rumored to be a secret cargo of billionaires, refugees from the new communist regime, who will serve as the lucrative tax base for the Cuomintang rump state. Bearing exotic treasures and looted antiquities, the Cuomintang leadership have declared their intention to erect a new Metropolitan Museum on Todt Hill. “The Metropolitan Palace Museum will showcase true New Yorker culture,” claimed one billionaire philanthropist speaking under condition of anonymity.

Signs of resentment are already brewing among the natives of Staten Island, who originally settled there under Dutch colonial rule, and have made the island their home for centuries after displacing the indigenous Lenape tribes. The Cuomintang ruling class have imported a foreign culture from Scarsdale and Long Island strange to the native islanders, who themselves speak a cant closer to that of their neighbors in the Kingdom of New Jersey.

Mainlander rulers have imposed their customs by force on the Islanders, and have wielded particular violence in mandating the use of a fork and knife to consume meals. Customarily, the natives use their hands to eat traditional dishes, consisting of “pizzas,” a kind of greasy flatbread imitating an Italian dish from the Generalissimo’s home province, favored by the Cuomintang elite, as well as the “hot dog,” which, despite its name contains no dog, although allegations have been made to the contrary.

Rumors of a purported massacre of Islanders protesting Cuomintang rule could not be independently confirmed at this time, but rampant garbage odors (even more than the usual noxious smells) have signaled potential signs of excavation at Fresh Kills Park, site of the former Fresh Kills Landfill. Asked about reports of protestors being rounded up and bused to the park in the middle of the night, the Generalissimo exploded at gathered reporters:

Ushered off stage by his brother and Aide-de-Camp Chris “Fredo” Cuomo, the younger Cuomo angrily responded to shouted questions of whether the Cuomintang regime was unleashing a reign of “White Terror” on Staten Island.

“I don’t understand how you can make this accusation,” the disgraced former CNN host barked. “First of all— Italians aren’t White! Second, the only terrorist here is Zoreman Marmarswami— if that is his real name— who personally flew an airliner into the North Tower.”

Across the strait, the Zohrani Soviet Caliphate has been established as the revolutionaries have consolidated power. Zohrani forces have subjugated the once powerful Governor Hochul, and begun purging remaining Cuomintang sympathizers on the mainland.

The warlord Curtis, feared leader of the Sliwa Clique, which controls the city’s strategic subway tunnels, has switched sides, proclaiming his support for Chairman Mamdani and pledging to rout any remaining Cuomintang sympathizers. Sources indicate his defection was driven by a failed assassination attempt by gangs of the same ethnicity as the Generalissimo. Mamdani has also offered full amnesty for Lord Sliwa and his family of 77 stray cats.

Chairman Mamdani has vowed to unify Staten island “by force if necessary,” despite prior support for Islander self-determination.

Independent historians assert that the city only unified in the past century, and Staten Island has been ruled separately for centuries, first by indigenous tribes, then by Dutch colonizers. Even after it was conquered by New York forces in the late 19th Century, City Hall had only tenuous control of the lawless pirate backwater.

Despite an initial wave of amnesties, the Zohrani Soviet Caliphate has begun what some observers claim is a growing tendency towards authoritarianism. Kosher hot dogs have been outlawed, and a mandate has been issued requiring all food carts to serve only chicken over rice. Mild sauce has been prohibited, and is rumored now to be available only at speakeasies with connections to the Greeks, who have been run underground following a Yemeni seizure of the diner business. The regime has begun to enforce jalapeño consumption, mandating their addition on all breakfast sandwiches.

Scores of Cuomintang sympathizers have been “sent down” to tend the rice paddies of Central Park, which has been flooded to supply grain for new city-run commissaries. The paddies are being irrigated with ice melted from the city’s skating rinks, denounced as a “bourgeoisie excess” which must be eradicated.

The billionaire Bill Ackman was placed under house arrest last night in his penthouse located in the Former Financiers’ Concession of the Upper East Side. He has issued statement, possibly under duress, declaring support for the new authorities.

Speaking at a Midwood synagogue, Mamdani attempted to assuage the fears of Jewish New Yorkers concerned by the new regime. “The right of all minority nationalities to develop their own nationality and culture towards socialism shall be upheld,” the young revolutionary declared in an announcement proclaiming the formation of a Preparatory Committee for the Establishment of the Yiddish Autonomous Region.

An edict has declared all Yeshivas will be reorganized into “Minyan Xueyuan,” with learning supervised by socialist cadres. “It is essential that Talmudic study be consistent with the principles of socialism and Marxist-Leninism,” said Mordecai Goldberg, political commissar for the South Williamsburg No. 1 Minyan Xueyuan.

Rabbi Moshe Indig of the Satmar clan has been named as representative for the Hasidic Nationality to the Newyorkers’ People’s Congress (NPC), which has taken the place of the City Council, whose members have been interned under suspicion of harboring counterrevolutionary sympathies.

A revolutionary atmosphere has gripped the city; in the early hours of the morning a faction of Zohranista youth calling themselves “red guards” seized the Horace Mann School, denouncing “bourgeoisie education” and “revisionist thinking.” According to one youth, identifying himself only as “Comrade Lei,” the Bronx school will be reorganized into a public school for the children of nearby workers.

“Those bourgeoisie students found suitable for rehabilitation will be given the opportunity to reeducate. Those who are incapable of self-criticism will be subject to reform through labor and assigned to a relevant work unit.”

A new banner over Madison Square Garden proclaims the Knicks as “guardians of the revolution,” and new rules imposed on the stadium prohibit visiting teams from scoring three-pointers against the home team.

Chairman Mamdani has vowed to root out bourgeois elements through the “Five Aunties” campaign: middle-aged women of varying degrees of connection to the Mamdani lineage will be deployed throughout the city to carry out the campaign. Although tasked with enforcing adherence to socialist principles, local reports indicate that these aunties can mostly be found sipping chai and hectoring their nephews to settle down and get married.

Speaking at a recently established “people’s gymnasium” in the former Hudson Yards Equinox, Chairman Mamdani vowed to reconquer Staten Island, deriding the Generalissimo as “a pawn of the New Jersey imperialists.” Fulminating at length against the scourge of “New Jersey imperialism,” the Chairman displayed a map of New Jersey’s alleged expansionist plan, vowing to unleash a global revolution to counter New Jersey imperialism.

Following his speech, Zohrani forces commenced shelling Hoboken, in an apparent aim of pressuring New Jersey’s rulers to withdraw their military backing for Generalissimo Cuomo.

Crowds of red guards seized with revolutionary fervor poured into the streets following the Chairman’s address, vowing to protect the city from New Jersey imperialism and Cuomintang saboteurs.

As the crowds reached 59^th Street, thronging red guards pulled down the statue of Columbus, and the circle was proclaimed “People’s Square.” Asked by a reporter whether the circular roundabout would be repaved into a square to match its new name, one young partisan responded indignantly: “I don’t know what you are talking about,” said the young Caucasian youth, gasping through tears between bites of a jalapeño-filled breakfast roll, “if the Party declares a circle to be a square, then it is a square.”

With tensions rising across the region, fears are mounting in the Portuguese enclave of Newark that has long served as an entrepôt for trade between New York City and European ports. Refugees have begun pouring into the neighboring British Crown Colony of Elizabeth, beseeching the Crown for protection. The Cuomintang are attempting to forge an alliance with the British, offering to accept Prince Andrew in exile in exchange for an expeditionary naval force to counterattack the mainland, according to intercepted communications leaked by Zohranista sympathizers.

Despite Generalissimo Cuomo’s official “Three Noes Policy,” insisting on no negotiation, no contact, and no compromise with the Communists, reports indicate backchannel talks are underway between the two sides. A senior Zohranista with knowledge of the unofficial negotiations spoke on condition of anonymity due to official denials of the existence of the talks.

According to the official, the Zohranistas are offering peaceful reunification under a “One City Two Systems” framework, allowing for a Staten Island Special Administrative Region which would function as a sort of capitalist laboratory and playground for billionaires as a free trade zone. Preliminary plans include luxury shopping malls, casinos, and yacht dealerships to attract capital from the world’s wealthy without harming the socialist nature of New York City.

At an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, the international community urged the safeguarding of freedom of navigation of the Verrazzano strait, through which 90% of the world’s most advanced potato chips transit.

A statement of protest has been issued from the exiled Prince of Queens, now puppet ruler of Maralakuo, demanding to be restored to the throne.

Inspired by BennetEnjoyer

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