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Good morning! I’m Lavanya Ramanathan, editor of the Today, Explained newsletter, and I hope you’re enjoying our best stories delivered to your inbox each day. 

Today on Vox, senior world correspondent Joshua Keating is exploring the highly tenuous position in which the island of Taiwan finds itself. 

From the outside, Taiwan has all the signifiers of a nation-state — it has a flag, a government and freely elected president, its own military. Yet, it’s not recognized as independent by most countries, including the United States, and it's not a member of the United Nations. Instead, Taiwan, which was founded on Chinese-controlled land, remains in a global limbo, perennially on the brink of war with China, its neighbor just 100 miles to the north.

Some US policymakers and experts believe that China aims to take the island by force by 2027. And in recent weeks, it has ratcheted up military drills near Taiwan, sending a surge of ships and aircraft around the island. 

Joshua visited Taiwan this fall to learn more about this particularly tense moment in international relations. I caught up with him to talk about Taiwan’s unique origin story and position in the world, and why what happens to this close US ally should matter greatly to Americans.

Our conversation has been condensed for length and lightly edited.

Lavanya Ramanathan: Tell us a little bit about Taiwan and its complicated history. 

Josh Keating: It goes back to the Chinese Civil War, which was fought by the Nationalist government led by a leader named Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Zedong's Communists. The Communists won that Civil War and the Nationalists retreated from mainland China to Taiwan, which was then an island under Chinese control. The government of Taiwan thought of itself as the government in exile for all of China, and for a long time was recognized by the United States as the government of China. 

All that started to change in the 1970s when President Nixon went to China and we normalized relations. All of a sudden, we recognized Beijing as the capital of China and the home of the Chinese government. But the US didn’t abandon Taiwan entirely; we continued sending military aid and providing for their defense, and there is a US diplomatic presence in Taiwan, but it's unofficial.

The critical thing that happened in the intervening years is that Taiwan has become a democracy. It is a very vibrant democracy in stark contrast to China. People in Taiwan have a much more independent, sovereign identity. You talk to Taiwanese politicians, and they say, “We don't have to declare independence. We're functionally independent already.”

Why would China want to take Taiwan back by force?

There's an ideological, symbolic point and then a strategic one, too. This is unfinished business from the Chinese Revolution: Their mortal enemies were camped out on this island, and they were never able to retake it.

Having this country right off the coast of China — full of Chinese people who speak Chinese, whose grandparents came from towns in China — where there clearly is a functioning democracy, is a challenge to the Chinese Communist Party's ruling ideology. 

Then there is Taiwan being in the US orbit. The Chinese view Taiwan as this American proxy right off the shore that's there to keep them bottled up and stymie their regional interests. It sits on some key shipping lanes through that region. Having Taiwan fully under their control would allow them to project naval power out into the Indo-Pacific and Southeast Asia in a way that they're not doing right now.

Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images

You visited recently. How does this fraught relationship with China affect daily life? 

I write about national security debates, and a huge one is: Are we prepared for China trying to invade Taiwan? You have this idea that they're living with World War III looming over them at all times. But then you get there and it feels pretty normal. People go about their day. The night markets are bustling. 

Then you talk to government employees, and they'll show that they have tourniquets in their desk, that they're prepared. William Lai, the current president, gave a National Day speech and talked about all these themes. He didn't use the word “independence,” of course, but talked about how Taiwan will never be under anyone's control again. And when he makes speeches like that, China tends to respond by surrounding them with these massive military drills.

It's always this calculation: They have to be prepared but also not get too much on a war footing. One, you could freak out your population, and two, that's the kind of thing that could just provoke more aggressive action by China. It's very tricky the way they have to carry out policy.

Why is the US so invested in this simmering conflict? How does the US walk the line around its diplomatic commitments to China and this more sort of philosophical support for Taiwan as a free state? 

The Taiwan Relations Act is US legislation that legally committed the US not to go to war to defend Taiwan, but to take steps to deter Chinese military action. The key thing that's changed in recent years is the emergence of the semiconductor industry.

The majority of semiconductor chips — and the vast majority of advanced semiconductor chips — are manufactured in Taiwan, and it's very difficult to manufacture them anywhere else. These are the devices that are in your phone, in your car, your refrigerator. Modern life depends, quite literally, on these little chips that are produced in Taiwan. If there were a war in the Taiwan Strait, it would dwarf the economic impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Because of the massive buildup of China's naval power and the size of its military now, and the US being stretched because there's a tremendous amount of military resources going to Ukraine and the Middle East, there are open questions about if we’d be able to intervene on Taiwan's behalf even if we wanted to.

AFP via Getty Images

Which brings us to Donald Trump. In 2016, when Trump was elected to his first term, the first call he took from another world leader was from the Taiwanese president — breaking 40 years of diplomatic protocol. It set the international community on fire and was seemingly a direct affront to China. What role do experts think he might play now?  

Trump took the call from Tsai Ing-Wen, then the administration sold Taiwan a lot of weapons, and there were also higher-level diplomatic contacts under the Trump administration. 

Most of the people he's appointed, maybe with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, are China hawks — those who are committed to aggressive policies to stymie China as an economic rival. And some of them, including Marco Rubio, are huge supporters of Taiwan, just as Mike Pompeo was in the first term. On the other hand, whether he would actually commit resources to defend Taiwan is a very different case. On the campaign trail, he said a number of times that Taiwan stole our chip business, and they should be paying us more for their defense. As always with Trump, it's a mixed bag.

Why should Americans care about what happens between China and Taiwan?

The US, in some people's view, has pledged to defend this island. If we did so, it would be a level of combat we haven't seen since maybe the Korean War or World War II, with massive numbers of casualties. The prospect of war is something Americans should be taking very seriously.

If Ukraine was a wake-up call for anything, it's that we are in a new era of military conflict and the sorts of wars that we thought were consigned to the past, with big troop carriers moving over borders trying to conquer territory. We might have thought we were past that, but clearly we're not. Those kinds of wars can still happen. One in Taiwan would just look very different from any conflict we've seen in our lifetimes.

How China could try to strangle Taiwan without firing a shot

By Joshua Keating
The Taiwan invasion everyone fears might never happen. Here’s what could take place instead.

Bob Henry/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

What will we remember about 2024? News cycles churn by quickly, and we can’t always predict what will make an impact.   But here are the key developments in technology and politics that are likely to matter next year, or even 10 years from now.

Emilia Pérez is a regressive movie. It will probably win an Oscar: Last week, Emilia Pérez received 10 Golden Globes nominations, including Best Picture - Musical or Comedy. Some have praised the movie — a movie musical about a trans Mexican drug lord — for exploring trans identity and Mexico’s drug war. Others have critiqued it for its poor portrayal of trans and Latino/Latina identity, but films about race and gender that fail to challenge stereotypes tend to dominate awards season.

The Republican power grab in North Carolina, explained: When Governor-elect Josh Stein and other Democrats take office in the state in 2025, many of them will be less powerful than their predecessors after the Republican-dominated legislature stripped away several lawmaker duties last week. Here’s how it will affect Stein, as well as the incoming lieutenant governor, attorney general, and superintendent of public instruction. 

How Democrats became “globalist shills”: Democrats have lost ground with working-class voters in a wide array of areas, including places where scarcely anyone works in manufacturing. Embracing free trade, according to some political experts, may have undermined the party and alienated many voters who then were drawn to President-elect Donald Trump.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

2.6 million Stanley mugs recalled: The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a warning after 38 people reported experiencing burns from using the product, after the lids on the popular cups shrank after heat exposure. Eleven people required medical attention. [NPR]

Hot Ones hits the road: BuzzFeed has sold First We Feast, the studio behind the popular celebrity talk show Hot Ones, in an $82.5 million cash deal to a group of investors, including the show’s host, Sean Evans. [Variety]

“How do I deal with my MAGA relatives during the holidays?” has been a cliché of service journalism over the last eight years. But I love what senior reporter Sigal Samuel did with the genre in the latest edition of her ethics advice column, Your Mileage May Vary. She combines a deep and serious engagement with moral and political philosophy with her characteristic humane, empathetic voice to show you how to effectively communicate across political differences. 

Have a question you want Sigal to answer on anything you’re stressed, ashamed, or confused about? Noodling on ethical quandaries going into the new year? You can email her directly at sigal.samuel@vox.com or fill out this anonymous form (either way, all questions will be anonymized).

—Marina Bolotnikova, Future Perfect deputy editor

Pete Gamlen for Vox

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Today’s edition was produced and edited by senior editor Lavanya Ramanathan, with contributions from staff editor Melinda Fakuade. We'll see you tomorrow!

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