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‘Better off with Taiwan’: Honduras joins other Latin American countries rethinking ties with China
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
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Taiwan is the closest part of the first island chain. The first island chain consists of Japanese, Taiwanese, and Filipino islands that are all western-aligned and could be used to blockade the entire Chinese coast. China sees this as a strategic vulnerability. Taiwan also used to be part of China. Combine all that with the "century of humiliation" narrative and you create the political conditions for an unwavering determination to take Taiwan as a way of reclaiming their spot on top. I doubt it has anything to do with industry, economy, or resources. It's just political narrative. Taiwan could be a barren desert. As long as their flag looks different and they're cozy with the west, China would still want to conquer them.
Agree with the geographic take. China is trying its imperial powers in a way where they choose their own enemies. They also have maritime disputes with SEA in areas where their supplies would come from, in an attempt to seize control of their own lifelines. They've also been pumping money into various countries in the SEA despite the conflict to gain soft power over them, so that a blockade of the Straits of Malacca would be less likely to happen in the event of a conflict with Taiwan. Of course, they continue to build out other avenues to reduce if not move their reliance on such chokepoints, Myanmar and Pakistan being prime examples, aside from their whole Belt and Road Initiative.
Back to Taiwan though, TSMC is still the leading semiconductor company that leads everyone else by a far margin, and if it's under the control of one country and they deny access of other countries to it, they would be able to gain technological supremacy in a few years, provided that they continue to guard their secrets from spies, which, to be fair, will definitely intensify in such a world. TSMC's plans, though, is that in the event of an invasion, they will destroy their fabs.
It's not entirely correct to say "Taiwan used to be part of China" without context.
The current ruling party has never had any strong claims on it. The old ruling party of mainland China escaped to the Taiwan island after losing a civil war to the other party. The current ruling party of mainland China has adopted imperialistic and nationalistic ideals and has decided the Taiwanese people have no right to be independent of the rest of China and see themselves as the only valid ruler for all Chinese people. All claims on the island itself are just cover for trying to quash independent groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Taiwan_Strait_Crisis
Quemoy and Matsu are two tiny islands, utterly worthless in the grand scheme, that almost caused WW3.