What happens if china attacks taiwan

Xi Jinping would clearly love to re-unite Taiwan with the Chinese mainland under his leadership but, when you add all this up, you can see how high the stakes are. Despite the increasingly fiery rhetoric coming out of certain Chinese media outlets you would have to think that cooler heads in the Chinese government would not be considering an imminent assault. However, with China's rising military power, these calculations could all change within a matter of years. Tensions with China worst in 40 years, says Taiwan.

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The battle to keep China off European university campuses. Getting to grips with. Popular articles. What do the different coloured poppies mean? The most extreme weather events of In pictures. The United States and its allies should have put an end to this long ago. Taiwan is modest in area, but it is home to The conquest of Taiwan by China would be cataclysmic.

International trade would be thrown into chaos. The entire Western Pacific would be destabilized. The credibility of the United States, were it to allow such a thing to happen after the debacle in Afghanistan, would be shattered. We should do so. The United States should announce — preferably in a joint statement with such Indo-Pacific allies as Japan, Australia, South Korea, and India — that it regards China and Taiwan as separate, sovereign, independently governed countries, neither subordinate to the other.

American defense cooperation with Taiwan should be ramped up and advanced US weapons based on the island to deter any Chinese attack, in much the way that Pershing missiles were deployed in Europe during the s to deter a Soviet attack. Over the past two generations, Taiwan has transformed itself from an outpost of authoritarianism into an oasis of liberty, human rights, and economic freedom.