Rebel Island, Boiling Moat
As geopolitical puzzles go, Taiwan's a winner, resulting in some convoluted journalese: Welcome to, say, 'pawn between two giants.' or would you prefer 'renegade province' or 'breakaway territory'?
WHEN THE CHINA WATCHER reaches for circumlocutions to parse the Taiwan problem there’s no shortage of clichés at hand.
“Self-ruled island” appears to be the favorite of the harried wire desk editor, who might also reach for the clumsy, “island that China claims as its own,” despite its arch satirical overtones – as if to say, dream on, China. This is what makes “self-governed democracy of 23 million people" a popular alternative.
It’s true that Taiwan is indeed a self-governed democracy of 23 million people, and as democracies go, it’s lively, boisterous even. But, essentially, “self-governed democracy of 23 million people” is an eye-glazer.
Better are the workarounds that genuflect to various aspects of Taiwan’s genuine status, such as “semiconductor powerhouse” and “chip factory to the world” or those that raise the enigmatic issue of Taiwan’s “Silicon shield.”
That’s the theory that Taiwan’s chip sector is so cornerstone to our global economy that China needs Taiwan as much as we need it, which of course is the problem, and why there are books such as “Boiling Moat” and “Rebel Island” – and further cliches such as “tinderbox” and “splittist forces” – the former used by the US propaganda machine and the latter by the PRC equivalent.
That doesn’t mean – it goes without saying – you should skip the books.
‘Rebel Island: The Incredible History of Taiwan’
Jonathan Clements
Publisher: Scribe (February, 2024)
Print length: 379 pages
ASIN : B0C9JZQ2LW
Jonathan Clements, author of A Brief History of the Samurai, Admiral Togo: Nelson of the East, A Brief History of Khubilai Khan, Sun Tzu’s Art of War: A New Translation and Confucius: A Biography, among many others, is clearly – if nothing else – an intrepid and prolific producer of books.
Setting his eyes on Taiwan, the result is “Rebel Island,” easily one of the more readable recent accounts of how Taiwan became – or was forged perhaps – into what it is today. Among many pluses to this quick, entertaining read, Clements dismisses the trope of Taiwan’s earliest history as being coincident with its exposure to “civilization.”
The “it all begins with the Dutch” story, among many things, omits the Spanish colony in the north of the island (Gobernación de Hermosa [Formosa] española, 1626-1642), which left behind the remnants of a fort in what was otherwise a short-lived adventure.
But mostly it omits the first Taiwanese themselves.
“Historians favor the Dutch version of history because Fort Zeelandia and its masters in the VOC [the Dutch East India Company; Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie] kept detailed written records, turning the indigenous people into nameless background characters, rebels to be suppressed or clients to be swindled,” the author writes.
In this sense, as at least one Australian reviewer of “Rebel Island” has noted, Taiwan is oddly akin to Australia: both have buried, unwritten, Austronesian-language histories.
Much as Australian history was once given a starting point of 1788, the history of Taiwan has often been written as if it started in 1624, the year the Dutch colonized Taiwan.
Clements turns throughout the book to the tribal histories that preceded and coexisted with the Dutch, the Spanish, the Ming refugees, the ascendant Qing Dynasty Manchus who semi-managed western coastal Taiwan until the arrival of the Japanese in 1895 – and after them the en-masse arrival of the defeated Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang, or KMT) in 1949. Indeed Taiwan’s lesser known indigenous history informs not only the title of the book, but much of the substance of it.
As for the roll call of would-be masters of Taiwan – that oft recited progression of Formosa’s travails – the irony is that none has prevailed.
The author implies this rather than dwelling on it, instead concentrating on telling the tale at length with a story-teller’s gift for details that bring dull recitation of historical dates to life. On, for example, the tussle between the Japanese and the Dutch over Taiwan in the first decade of the 1600s—amid pleas for intervention by the Chinese Ming Dynasty—Clements writes:
In 1609 … the king of the Ryukyu Islands sent a letter to the Chinese emperor, complaining about samurai interference in his country, and claiming that he had recently refused a Japanese request for soldiers to help them in a putative invasion of Taiwan. In 1616, the king sent another letter, warning the Chinese that the lord of Nagasaki was planning to send a fleet of 13 ships to establish a trading base on Taiwan. Only three of them reached Taiwan, where they were soon shooed away. A far more dangerous presence in the area was that of the Dutch East India Company … founded in 1602 as a result of European tensions, as a new front in the war of the Netherlands against Spain. Within two years, the first documented Dutch vessel had reached Taiwan …
Actually, the vessel had reached Penghu, then known as the Pescadores, which the Ming considered Chinese territory. Eventually, writes Clements, an envoy arrived from the Ming Emperor, instructing the Dutch they were unwelcome on the Chinese territory, but they could ply their trade beyond the Emperor’s jurisdiction. The Dutch wrote at the time:
If we wished to go to the island of Formosa, and to fortify ourselves there, the king would have no objection …
The rest is history, one might suggest, except for that that troublesome buried history before it and the fact that the tales of conquest and revolt build upon each other to the point that Taiwan’s provenance is as confusing and numerous as its languages.
After all, even the idea that Taiwan is a predominantly Mandarin speaking turns out to be a gloss on a mercurial dynamic. Clements writes:
The 1.7 per cent of the population that today identify as indigenous speak at least one of 16 surviving Austronesian languages; to confound the historian, another dozen indigenous languages have died out in the last couple of centuries. The idea that Taiwan is a ‘Mandarin-speaking’ island is a political decree, issued in the 1940s by the refugee KMT government, and enshrined in 1953 in a strict educational policy. That, in turn, was at least partly designed to stamp out Japanese, the lingua franca of Taiwanese culture and civil life for the first four decades of the 20th century, and still a shibboleth that pops up in local slang.
Essentially, Taiwan, or Formosa, was a problem case long before the PRC’s foreign minister, accused Taiwan President Lai Ching-te of betraying the nation and its “ancestors.”
It took the Qing Dynasty 40 years to mop up the remnants of Ming Dynasty loyalists who had retreated to the island, proclaiming it part of the empire in 1644 and semi-making it so in 1683. The Japanese made shorter shrift of things when they made Taiwan the first stop in their empire in the making, but they were still suppressing “savages” until they lost WWII …
With an ‘incident’ of some sort roughly every 30 hours, year after year, and periodic escalations requiring a more involved military response, the Japanese military began making pre-emptive plans. Administrator Mochiji Rokusaburō issued a chilling Report Concerning the Governing of Savages (1903), advising a more active genocide against the indigenous peoples, on the grounds that they barely counted as human beings.
Taiwan, which to this day sees brawls in its parliament, has never been for the faint of heart. A common saying during the Qing administration was: “Of every ten who reached Taiwan, just three remain; six are dead and one has returned home.”
Small wonder the author’s fascination with Taiwan’s liminal status, and arguably – although the headhunters and the malaria have been banished – that continues to be Taiwan’s distinction: a technology powerhouse without the right to call itself a country – a Ghost Nation as an upcoming book on Taiwan by Chris Horton calls it.
Flying its flag high, thumbing its nose David-like at its towering neighbor across the strait, the would-be occupier plots its next provocation, intent on stamping out any last ounce of rebellion Taiwan has left. History – and “Rebel Island'“s account of it, suggests that it will only yield at great cost.
‘The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan’
Matt Pottinger (Editor)
Publisher: Hoover Press (July, 2024)
Print length: 266 pages
ASIN : B0CX9N23XL
ISBN-13 : 978-0817926465
“THE BOILING MOAT” is premised on the idea that there’s a point at which China assesses that the risks involved in annexing Taiwan outweigh the gains – and it folds. None of the writers in this collection of essays seems ready to concede that Beijing has talked so big about Taiwan’s centrality to Xi Jinping’s vision of the “great revival or rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” that a no-show on invasion day is unacceptable.
Questions such as “Can we afford it?” or “What if we lose?” are likely to suggest a traitorous lack of zeal.
Edited by Matt Pottinger, former Asia director on the National Security Council during Donald Trump’s first term as president, “The Boiling Moat” acknowledges Beijing’s ideological fervor:
More than once, Xi has described unification with Taiwan as a prerequisite for achieving his broader objectives for China on the world stage, a vision he calls ‘the Chinese dream for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.’ In a 2017 address to the 19th Party Congress in Beijing, Xi said that ‘complete national unification is an inevitable requirement for realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.’
In short, China – a nation that trades in nationalism, has no truck with international law, and sees itself as driven by destiny – is set on “bringing Taiwan home” by hook or by crook. “The Boiling Moat” acknowledges this as well:
… Whereas Xi’s more immediate predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, framed war as something Beijing would wage in response to a declaration of independence by Taiwan, official propaganda under Xi has gone further by suggesting that force may be used to compel unification, not just to respond to a Taiwanese bid for formal independence.
Since taking power in 2012, the escalation of pressure on Taiwan has been dramatic and systematic. But it’s been particularly evident since the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) came to power under Tsai Ing-wen in 2016.
Beginning that year, China conducted military drills around Taiwan with increasing frequency. By 2023, China spent about US$15 billion, or 7% of its defense budget – roughly 85% of Taiwan’s entire annual defense budget – on exercises in the Western Pacific alone. In 2019, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) warplanes crossed the so-called median line between the PRC and the ROC (the Republic of China, as Taiwan is otherwise known) and have subsequently continued to do so unabated.
The number of such incursions has increased from 240 crossings in 2021 to 269 in 2022, 271 in 2023, and 313 in 2024, according to the Jamestown Foundation, opening what experts call a “new normal.” Today, PLA warplanes enter Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) more than 245 times a month, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry.
The pattern is clear: Xi has transformed what were occasional, symbolic military activities into regular, sophisticated, and increasingly realistic rehearsals for invasion or blockade – all while spending massive resources to demonstrate China's growing capability and resolve.
As the Financial Times reminds us in a recent report:
Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific command, in February said it was “very close” to the point where the “fig leaf of an exercise” could mask preparations for an attack.
“The Boiling Moat” acknowledges this, pointing out that the PRC will make its move when it’s ready.
In Chapter 3, “The Myth of Accidental Wars,” which makes every impression of standing as the book’s mission statement, the authors (Matt Pottinger and Matthew Turpin, former US National Security Council member and co-author of “Silicon Triangle”) write:
Western diplomats and journalists reflexively assume more hotlines and communication channels with Beijing are a key to preventing a mishap from spiraling into war. What they fail to recognize is that if war follows a military mishap, it wouldn’t be because of a misunderstanding. Quite the opposite: it would be because Beijing has made a deliberate decision that the time is advantageous to fight a war it has spent decades equipping and rehearsing for [emphasis added]. Leaders start wars when they believe war will pay strategic dividends that couldn’t be obtained through peaceful means—not because their anger got the better of them on a particular afternoon or because they couldn’t find a working phone number for the White House.
The answer, write Pottinger and Turpin, is deterrence.
Geography affords Taiwan and its defenders an advantage that precludes the need to match the People’s Liberation Army ship for ship, warplane for warplane, and rocket for rocket. Taiwan’s relative lack of suitable landing beaches, its mountainous coastline, and the hundred-mile-wide Taiwan Strait (something Ukrainians can only envy) are favorable ingredients for cooking up another Cold War–style “offset.” Provided that Taiwan and the United States—together with its allies—have the means to turn the Taiwan Strait into a “boiling moat,” deterrence can prevail. The chapters that follow explain how.
The chapters that follow, do indeed attempt to do that. “The Boiling Moat” is replete with exhortations and should-dos, if the US, Taiwan and its regional neighbors want to avoid Taiwan disappearing into the maw of Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-ruled China. But those chapters also beg the question, what if deterrence doesn’t work? What if the PLA goes ahead and sucker punches Taiwan with no warning and before it can mobilize, catching the US and Japan off guard?
Just as scarily, what if the deterrence “The Boiling Moat” so urgently calls for Taiwan to be provided simply isn’t available?
In March this year, US President Donald Trump called on Taiwan to up its defense spending to 10% of GDP. The proposal was dismissed in Taiwan, not least because, as noted in the local press:
Taiwan would have to spend NT$2.6 trillion (US$81.7 billion) per year on the defense budget to meet Trump’s demand, even though it only has a total annual budget of NT$3 trillion.
In short, 10% would bankrupt the government.
Meanwhile, ironically the backlog of US arms due to be delivered to Taiwan stands at US$21.54 billion. It’s a number that has been building since 2019. Put it down to American industrial capacity being overextended by arms shipments to Ukraine defending itself against Russia and to Israel for its offensive in Gaza. Add to it supply chain issues from COVID-19 and general production bottlenecks in the US defense industry.
So-called big-ticket items – F-16s and Abrams tanks – account for more than 50 percent of the value, but the backlog also includes arms systems and resources for asymmetric battle, which Taiwan is increasingly turning to its own technology know-how to accomplish.
Just days ago, in an interview with Taiwan Defense Minister Wellington Koo, the Wall Street Journal noted that Taiwan is commissioning its “first-ever army drone units this year” and introducing “sea drones to its naval forces, part of its efforts to modernize its arsenal with cutting-edge technology to prepare for a potential Chinese invasion …
The steps fit into a shift from a focus on traditional forces to building up its capabilities intended to make China think twice before attacking. Taiwan’s marines have already transformed some tank and artillery battalions into drone squads, according to Koo.
“It would be best if China wakes up every day feeling like ‘today’s just not the day to invade,’” he said.
To be sure, Taiwan will continue to seek to purchase arms from the US for its defense, but even Newsweek gets that it’s as much about “currying favor” as obtaining an instant fix for the threat of China.
In the meantime, Xi has been restructuring the PLA’s command structure and its units since 2015, with an emphasis on smaller, more flexible units, as China continues to master joint operations – all with the aim of reducing conversion time for attack to a minimum – hours ideally.
Yet, despite all the rehearsals and incessant training, taking Taiwan is a toweringly tall order for an untested military such as China’s especially as modern warfare changes before our eyes. Hopefully, the best deterrence of all – as Xi continues to purge PLA generals, reportedly for corruption and “violating political discipline” – is China itself.
Note to readers: Apologies for the extraordinary delay in putting out this issue. I’ve had business to attend to, as well as some personal issues. ChinaDiction will return on a far more regular basis from now on. Next up: “Granta 169: China.”