America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has been a propaganda boon for autocrats, and none more so than China. China’s state media have been gushing with stories trumpeting America’s decline. China aspires to be the dominant global superpower, and after generations spent policing global stability the US has empire fatigue.

As the crowning symbol of its global ascendance, China’s fervent desire to coerce Taiwan into “reunification” is common knowledge. There are credible analyses suggesting China plans to conquer Taiwan by force if necessary, transforming a vibrant democracy into another fiefdom of totalitarian oppression.

Do we care if China subverts the democratically expressed desires of 23 million people?

Contemporary Taiwan is a product of the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang) immediately after WWII. After a series of losses, Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan in 1949 with some 2 million followers, effectively relocating the Republic of China (ROC) to the island. In that same year, the CCP declared itself the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).

Both the ROC and PRC claimed sovereignty over China since that time. The PRC has had far greater success advancing that claim. In 1971 UN members voted to recognize the PRC as the representative for China in the United Nations.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter established diplomatic relations with the PRC and abrogated a mutual defense treaty between the US and ROC. Those moves were a quid pro quo for Chinese support of the US proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and China’s punitive expedition against Vietnam in 1978. At the time the PRC characterized itself as united with the US, Japan, and Western Europe against Soviet aggression.

Today the PRC demands that international institutions and trading partners observe an exhaustive set of restrictions regarding the status of Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

Above all, the PRC vehemently objects to any media that refer to Taiwanese nationhood. Thanks to China’s cajoling, only 13 of the 193 UN member states recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation.

The CCP has steadily increased military and economic pressure on Taipei, while simultaneously working to subvert Taiwanese elections and gain control politically. In September, the Chinese military flew more than 150 sorties into Taiwan’s air defense zone.

Until the 1980s Kuomintang alumni dominated Taiwan’s military and politics. They advocated for big military budgets, a large standing army, and an offensive strategic posture molded around “retaking the mainland.”

Today the country’s strategic posture is focused on defending against a PRC invasion. Taiwan’s standing army has shrunk from 450,000 troops in 1997 to roughly 300,000, while spending on naval and air defenses climbed sharply.

Designing a response to PRC military aggression in Taiwan is an urgent priority. Do we meet force with force, as in Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait? Or with the diplomatic whimpers that consigned Hong Kong’s democracy protesters to prison?

It helps to understand the stakes. Does America have strategic interests in Taiwan?

In 1979 Congress rebutted President Carter’s nullification of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty by passing the Taiwan Relations Act. The Act stipulates that the US will supply Taiwan with the equipment and services needed to “maintain sufficient self-defense capabilities.”

Under every subsequent administration the US has completed large weapons sales to Taiwan. In 2008 President Bush completed a $6.5 billion arms sale that included anti-aircraft systems and Apache helicopters. In 2010 the Obama administration closed an even larger deal that included billions for Blackhawk helicopters, Patriot missiles and AESA radars.

So we do have an economic interest in selling weapons to Taiwan, and a successful PRC invasion would place massive amounts of US weapons technology in the hands of an adversary. Additionally, we have a strategic interest in cooperating with Taiwan as a bulwark defending freedom of transit in the South China Sea.

The world is also heavily reliant upon Taiwan’s semiconductor “foundry” industry. Semiconductor foundries manufacture chips designed by other companies. TSMC, the world’s largest chipmaker, has a 58% share of this outsourcing market.

Chip supply disruptions spawned by Covid-19 have forced automakers and other US manufacturers to idle factories in 2021. These hiccups have revealed how dependent we are on Taiwanese supply chains.

In response, the US passed a $52 billion package of subsidies for the semiconductor industry in June. In recognition of the Taiwan invasion threat, and China’s plan to spend $200 billion subsidizing chip companies through 2025, this bipartisan action repudiated a longstanding US bias against government-led industrial policy.

If China does attempt to “reunify” Taiwan through military force the stakes are high. The economic and strategic implications would eclipse anything we have experienced since Pearl Harbor. Chinese aggression in the South China Sea is a clear and present danger that should supersede our domestic tribal divisions.