Thoughts on Taiwan

The visit to Taiwan by the American Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has resulted in an (I loved this phrase from the Financial Express) “overdrive of fire and brimstone” from China. That China considers Taiwan a breakaway province is well known. That the US considers Taiwan a quasi-independent entity that should not be forcibly occupied by China is equally well known. What then was the purpose of Pelosi’s visit?

 

That’s a question for which I’ve not heard any clear answer. When China protested and ranted as Pelosi’s visit approached, did the US find itself in a position where to back down from the visit would mean a loss of face, a signal to China of change in the power equation? Was the US forced to go through with the visit then?

 

But once Pelosi landed and left, the Chinese government found itself in a problem – it left them red-faced that she’d ignored their protests. Worse, so did a lot of Chinese citizens, who poured scorn on their country’s leadership for doing nothing other than using mere words. Did that force a humiliated China to do something (aka fire missiles over Taiwan, send in military jets and warships closer to Taiwan than before)?

 

And as those Chinese “military exercises” extended on and on, did it in turn force the US to send its warships through those waters as a sign that they would intervene should the Chinese actually attack Taiwan?

 

Have these exercises now wetted the expectation among Chinese that the day they take back Taiwan is not too far away? How safe does Taiwan feel now? Since Taiwan manufactures a huge chunk of the world’s semiconductors, how catastrophic will any blockade of Taiwan by China turn out in future for the world at large?

 

Outside of the military steps, China also withdrew from joint steps planned with the US on the environment. Is that just posturing, a short-term step to mollify the baying-for-action Chinese public?

 

To summarize, did the US miscalculate the anger and thus the response from the Chinese? Or were they deliberately sending a message to China that, while it may be rising, it is nowhere near ready for war with the US?

 

A loss of face can lead to many irrational responses. History has shown this many, many times. So what exactly was the purpose of Pelosi’s visit? At a time when the US is practically at war with Russia over Ukraine? To open a second front of war? To show the world that the US can take on Russia and China simultaneously? And here we used to think that Trump was dangerous…

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more