Today, Americans are worried, more than ever, that modern society and the rule-based order that encompasses it is teetering on the precipice of total annihilation. Many notable institutions, like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists with their infamous doomsday clock, are warning the western world that the end is nigh due to a frightening rise in global armed conflicts and political, as well as territorial, disputes. The most prevalent of these conflict zones is the Taiwan Strait, a narrow body of water that safeguards this beacon of democracy from its aggressive, autocratic mainland. In order to fully comprehend the significance of the island nation and its current existence, one must look back to the history of modern China
In the midst of the Great Depression, the Republic of China, who controlled both the mainland and overseas Taiwan, was plagued by a string of ineffective leaderships and misguided policies that crippled the power of the provisional government. Emboldened by the window of weakness, a man named Mao Zedong created the Chinese Communist Party, seeking to overthrow the incumbent Kuomintang Party who led the Republic of China. This revitalizes the chaos occurring in the very-much-still-ongoing Chinese Civil War, itself a holdover from the Sino-Japanese conflicts that were briefly neutralized during the second World War. Following the Allied Victory, however, the insurgencies continued to engage in their offensives.
Unable to maintain multiple fronts from these countless threats, the Communists, marginalized groups wanting higher religious, or political autonoms; and political revisionists, the Kuomintang were left with no choice but to succumb to both internal and external pressures and flee to the neighboring, state-occupied Taiwan. There, the nationalists were safe from the ruthless onslaught of Mao’s Red Army, effectively handing over administration of the unguarded landmass to them; thus leading to the creation of a new, communist China, or the People’s Republic of China as it is known today. Directly preceding the formation of these two states, they both entrenched themselves in separate, repressive authoritarian regimes, both vowing reunification with the other by any means necessary. This trend continued in Taiwan for several decades until 1987, when the process of democratization began.
While liberalizing, Taiwan enacted land-distribution and zoning reforms, reinvigorating the country’s chronically-inert industrial sector and opening its labor market to the western world. During this economic boom, Taiwan invested heavily into the production of highly-specialized electronic goods, resulting in the creation of the federally-funded institution, TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Today, TSMC produces a lion’s share of the world’s civilian and military electronics, with an estimate by The Economist crediting the single company for creating as much as 60% of the global supply. With this, it is no surprise that the aforementioned Economist article also dubs this phenomenon Taiwan’s “silicon shield” as the industry not only serves as an economic boon for the perhaps-otherwise middle-income nation, but also a lifeline for its geopolitical security.
See, because warfare would likely take these industrial plants down with the ship and they serve such a large portion of the global economy, the communists will try anything in their power to claim those luxuries for themselves without lifting a finger. As Taiwan’s now-notorious 2024 presidential election was in full swing, China started a program designed to “integrate” regions of Taiwan’s outer islands with the mainland. It offers fast-track citizenship, and “ease of exchanges” between residents traveling between the two nations. Taiwan has called this out as a blatant attempt to subjugate these border regions.
Complicating matters further, Biden’s “CHIPS and Science Act” pledges to revitalize the American semiconductor industry. For Taiwan, the consequences of this policy could be catastrophic as it sees various vendors, such as Samsung and AMD, head for American soil.
A year on, it has remained unclear whether this has affected the country’s market share, and how that will play into the coming geopolitical calculus surrounding the Sino-Taiwanese region.
