Increasing numbers of Chinese war planes have flown into Taiwan’s airspace in recent weeks, raising questions about the island’s future. Why does this matter, and should New Zealanders care? National Correspondent Lucy Craymer explains.

Tensions in the Taiwan Strait increased markedly last month, when both China and Taiwan celebrated their national days, fuelling fears that Beijing could – as Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly hinted – move to take the island by force.

Over consecutive days, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army sent a record number of planes – including nuclear-capable H-6 bombers – into Taiwan’s air defence zone. In a speech, Xi reiterated his desire to bring about the “unification” of Taiwan with China.

In response, Taiwan scrambled fighter jets, issued radio warnings and deployed an air missile defence system. Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen,​ said the state would shore up its defences “to ensure that nobody can force Taiwan to take the path China has laid out for us”.​

China’s military aggressions have prompted warnings from Taiwan about a miscalculation that could spark all-out war – or that China could use the sorties as a precursor for an all-out invasion.

Taiwan might be more than 9000km from New Zealand, but what happens there matters to us.

“In Asia, it’s probably the most problematic flashpoint in terms of potentially leading to conflict,” says Dr Jason Young, director of the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre at Victoria University.

“That conflict would have massive implications for New Zealand’s involvement but also massive implications for peace and stability in the region.”

New Zealand’s Government has been silent on the increasing incursions by Chinese planes. But last month a New Zealand warship was part of a large military flotilla that sailed through the South China Sea in a show of force, part of an effort to stand up to China.

The history

China’s Xi talks about the “reunification” of China and Taiwan, but in reality, Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China.

Taiwan was administered by China’s Qing dynasty from 1683 to 1895. Then Japan won the first Sino-Japanese War and China ceded control of Taiwan to Japan. That continued until Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945.

In the meantime, the “Republic of China” had been established in the mainland, but a civil war broke out between the ruling Nationalists, the Kuomintang, and Mao Zedong’s emerging Communist Party. The Nationalists, led by General Chiang Kai-shek, and about 1.2 million people fled the mainland and set up in Taiwan.

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(Taiwan’s indigenous people have lived there for thousands of years and currently make up 2 per cent of its population.​ Māori have genetic as well as language and cultural links to this population.)

The Communists established the “People’s Republic of China” on the mainland in 1949, while the Nationalists took their “Republic of China” to Taiwan.

“One China”

The Communist Party continues to insist that there is only “One China” and it views Taiwan – which comprises a main island and a bunch of smaller islands, including Kinmen, which is roughly 3km off the coast of the mainland – as a breakaway province.

For several decades after the split, most of the world viewed the exiled Republic of China government as the legitimate government of not just Taiwan, but all of China.

Things began to change in the 1970s, when the US chose to engage with China in a strategic rebalancing aimed at countering the Soviet Union. It officially established diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979, recognising the Communist-run People’s Republic as the sole legitimate government of China.

In October 1971, New Zealand supported China – rather than Taiwan – taking a seat at the United Nations. The following year, the New Zealand Labour Party established diplomatic ties with the Communist government of China. As importantly, it acknowledged (although did not explicitly recognise) the position of the Chinese Government that Taiwan was an “inalienable part of China’s territory”.

China’s boom

As China’s population boomed through the 1 billion mark, and it embarked on a series of economic reforms that saw it become the world’s factory and then a huge market of aspirational consumers, that bet looked like a lucrative one for many countries.

But the calculation has begun to change in the past couple of decades. Taiwan, population 23 million, has become a vibrant democracy – complete with punch-ups in the legislature and energetic street rallies. But it continues to exist in a kind of limbo, not recognised as a country in its own right, and is not a member of the United Nations.

Meanwhile, Communist Party-run China has begun to use its economic clout to further its diplomatic aims – including by peeling away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies.

Now only 15 states – including Palau, Nauru, Nicaragua and the Holy See – officially recognise Taiwan. Pacific Islands including Kiribati and the Solomons switched allegiances from Taiwan to China in recent years – moves often accompanied by promises of huge amounts of financial aid, loans and investment.​

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New Zealand has, however, continued to have economic and cultural ties with Taiwan. It has a Commerce and Industry Office in Taipei and signed a comprehensive trade treaty in 2013 with Taiwan.

The way New Zealand interacts with Taiwan is similar to much of the world. Even the US, which ships military hardware to Taiwan and trains its military, does not formally recognise it.

Annual trade between the two economies totals about $2.3 billion, making it our ninth-largest export market. The Taiwanese buy dairy, fruit, meat and wood and in a normal year our country is a popular holiday destination. In New Zealand, we rely on imports of electronics – Taiwan is the world’s largest producer of semiconductor chips that make, for example, smartphones operate – and plastics.

Does China police the One-China policy?

The issue of Taiwan’s exclusion from key world bodies peaked last year as the pandemic raged and countries questioned the sense in continuing to exclude Taiwan – where Covid-19 was being well-managed – from the World Health Organisation and wanted it returned as an observer.

New Zealand supported this, with the foreign minister at the time, Winston Peters, calling Taiwan the “standout world success story on Covid-19”. “They have got something to teach the rest of the world, and every country including China must surely want to know the secret of the success,” he said.

But China prevailed, and Taiwan remains excluded.

Why now?

There are two key factors.

One: Taiwanese millennials say they were “born independent” and have never known anything but a democratic way of life. They look at the increasing authoritarian turn in China, and want none of it. Some say they feel culturally closer to democratic Japan or South Korea than to the People’s Republic.

Two: Hong Kong. The real target for China’s “one country, two systems” policy, implemented in Hong Kong after it returned to Chinese control in 1997, was always Taiwan.

As Beijing has eroded civil liberties and political freedoms in Hong Kong, it has become increasingly clear to Taiwanese that this framework doesn’t hold.

Analysts say that the Chinese Communist Party is increasingly fearful it has lost a whole generation of Taiwanese, as it has in Hong Kong, and therefore wants to act sooner rather than later to exert control over Taiwan too.

As China’s military has grown in the past decades, it is now in a position where analysts say an invasion is conceivable. At the same time, the US military presence in the region has waned, allowing the balance of power to start to shift.

Why should New Zealand care?

There are real concerns that conflict across the Taiwan Strait is now a possibility. If it does happen, then the safety and security of our region is threatened.

Taiwan is referred to as part of the ‘first island chain’ – a series of islands that also include Okinawa, Japan and the Philippines that are a physical barrier that make it significantly more difficult for China to move naval assets eastward. Military strategists argue that controlling Taiwan would allow them easy access for the likes of Chinese submarines into the Pacific – our backyard.

An invasion of Taiwan would result in war on a scale that would touch on New Zealand’s interests, says Ford Hart, a former US diplomat who served as consul-general to Hong Kong and Macau, and China director at the National Security Council.

“There is also a danger of escalation between nuclear powers,” says Hart, who now lives in Wellington. “It would destabilise the region.”

With New Zealand’s principle-based foreign policy, it would be difficult for the country to ignore an invasion of an island with a democratic, peaceful, law-based population the size of Australia, he says.

It would also increase the spread of authoritarianism.

Catherine Churchman,​ a lecturer in Asian Studies at Victoria University, says that an open, free and democratic Taiwan remains an example for the rest of the China that democracy can work in Chinese society and, and it also stops the influence of the People’s Republic of China growing.

“We don’t want that kind of regime spreading further out of China and remodelling other countries,” she adds.