Why isn’t the Taiwanese Cause bigger than a geopolitical headline?

Bessie Chu
3 min readFeb 17, 2024

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I was reading this article - The Taiwan Catastrophe: What America — and the World — Would Lose If China Took the Island. It’s yet another warning about a conflict with China and preventing one.

Screenshot from the Article

I wish international news articles about Taiwan weren’t so often framed in these terms, but I also often wonder why our cause doesn’t elicit the same sympathy by masses around the world as others.

Especially with Americans, we share crucial vital interests: the entire world economy would shatter into a depression — the COVID supply chain shortages and Ukraine war inflation pale in comparison to the utter destruction to the lives of everyday people if a war isn’t deterred, and common values: belief in LGBT rights, gender equality, and democracy.

From: The Summit for Democracy and the Role for Taiwan

I’d hypothesize that for the many Americans, Asia feels too distant and abstract, for the right-wing, we’re simply a military cudgel and proxy for America power rather than real people who could be killed for our land, for the the left-wing who look at the world through too simple terms of the oppressed/colonized and oppressor/colonizer, our situation and history cognitively don’t fit in such limiting abstractions of the world.

Americans also don’t see the chain reaction of a future in which we don’t provide security guarantees to much of the world, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and accelerated environmental degradation that would follow.

We’ve hardly always been an honorable, responsible, or trustworthy actor in history with our power, but our system allows for change and a chance do to things different — I do not share the belief we are damned because of our violent history, nor do I find it a viable alternative for most people on Earth, far more who will face a violent, poorer, and oppressive world without us at the helm.

From the article:

“Taiwan is ranked by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the world’s eighth most “fully democratic” polity, ahead of every country in Asia and even the much older democracies of the United Kingdom and the United States. Its people enjoy freedom of speech and freedom of association. Taiwan also has one of the most economically equitable societies anywhere, with a relatively low disparity in income distribution despite having among the highest median incomes. Its per capita GDP overtook Japan’s in 2023.

Over the past two-plus decades, democracy has deepened its roots in Taiwan.

Taiwan ranks sixth in the world for gender equality, according to a UN Development Program index. Women hold more than 40 percent of seats in Taiwan’s national legislature, the highest percentage in Asia and well ahead of the United States, where just 28 percent of members of Congress are women. Taiwanese have twice elected a female president, several of its leading cities are led by female mayors, and the incoming vice president is female. Taiwan’s respect for the rights of indigenous peoples (with designated legislative seats) and minority groups stands out, too. In 2019, Taiwan became the first society in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.

Taiwan is a democratic standout in another important respect: its faith in democracy is growing at a time when many democracies are doubting their system of government. A Taiwan Foundation for Democracy poll in 2023 found that three-quarters of Taiwanese believe that although there are problems with democracy, it remains the best system. And in a refreshing contrast with the United States, younger people were especially likely to hold that view.

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At that point, another problem would arise: having lost faith in the United States’ security commitments, U.S. allies would face great incentives to develop their own nuclear weapons. Ever since China’s first nuclear test, in 1964, Washington has been able to dissuade most East and Southeast Asian countries from going nuclear. But an Asia reeling from the annexation of Taiwan would present very different circumstances and might send leaders scrambling to acquire nuclear armaments to protect themselves.”

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Bessie Chu

Taiwanese-American working as a Platform Product Director in Taipei, Taiwan. New Yorker. 626-raised. Optimist at heart in a realist’s clothing.