In Paris Spleen, Charles Baudelaire describes a picnic he goes to in the French countryside. As he offers a slice of bread to a local child who is begging for it thinking it to be a cake, another child appears and disputes the precious acquisition. Baudelaire is astonished as he observes a hideous fistfight between the two farm boys and, upon the battle coming to an end, neither of the panting and bloody children manage to have a bite off the ‘cake,’ now scattered in crumbs among the sand. ‘So there is a superb country where bread is called cake,’ writes Baudelaire, ‘a delicacy rare enough to generate a perfectly fratricidal war!’
A looming military confrontation between the United States and the People’s Republic of China over the status of Taiwan endangers the future of both superpowers and the rest of the world. Trade decoupling eliminates the economic welfare to which we have grown accustomed; severance of dialogues exacerbates the risks of climate change and other global issues; most importantly, a deadly showdown, regardless of the outcome, would lead to overwhelming loss of life among on all sides—particularly that of civilians situated in Taiwan, the ‘cake’ in this nightmare scenario.
The clash of US and Chinese political narratives is the direct cause of our sleepwalking into what some experts dub as the ‘Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis.’ Beijing and Washington, through generations of politicization, have inflated Taiwan-related security issues to a non-substantive level. This problem of ‘over-perception,’ in turn, exaggerates Taiwan’s ideological and security significance and reinforces the rhetoric otherwise only intended for domestic consumption. Finally, the creation and sustainment of an incorrigible enemy image rewards opportunists with in domestic politics—notably ‘China hawks’ in the US and ‘Wolf Warriors’ in China—at the expense of those who are trying to maintain peaceful coexistence despite tremendous internal pressure.
The narratives of threat amplification become a self-fulfilling prophecy and geopolitical instability looms larger.
The Making of the Cake
Despite the tremendous social, economic, and political transformations Taiwan has endured since the retreat of Chiang Kaishek’s forces from the mainland, policymakers in Beijing and Washington, from 1949 onwards, have attached objectifying labels to Taiwan’s people and their government. Taiwan was Douglass MacArthur’s ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ and has become Nancy Pelosi’s ‘democratic partner’ against the Communist Party of China’s ‘accelerating aggression.’ In the Mao Zedong era, US military bases in Taiwan were ‘the noose around the neck of American imperialism,’ and Xi Jinping recently proclaimed Taiwan reunification as ‘the cause of supreme glory of great national rejuvenation.’ As a consequence of this rhetoric, Taiwan has come to represent ambiguous security aims, or, more accurately, ambiguous ideologies.
In August 2022, Nancy Pelosi, the incumbent US House Speaker, led a congressional delegation to Taiwan. According to the Speaker, the visit aimed to ‘stand by’ the ‘island of resilience,’ a symbol of ‘democracy itself’ which the Communist Party of China (CPC) now ‘threaten[s].’ As Pelosi’s Democratic Party anticipates defeat in the upcoming midterm elections, her ‘utterly reckless’ Taiwan trip was echoed by waves of affirmation from the Republican Party. By the night of her visit, a total of 26 Senate Republicans had said they supported the House Speaker. ‘Nancy, I’ll go with you.’ tweeted Trump-era Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ‘I’m banned in China, but not freedom-loving Taiwan.’ In an age of extreme partisanship and polarization, the GOP’s approval of a Democrat leader was a highly unusual, if not bizarre occurrence. The Biden White House was certainly aware of China’s potentially disastrous retaliations, yet the President stayed quiet as he could not afford to look feeble vis-à-vis Beijing.
Pelosi’s visit created an uproar in China, too. Officially, the Chinese Ambassador to the US, Chinese Foreign and Defense ministries, and even Xi Jinping himself have voiced their strong opposition to Washington’s ‘salami strategy.’ The separation of powers is not a concept familiar to the Chinese public, and many Chinese netizens were under the impression that Biden could easily stop Pelosi if he really wanted to. Semi-officially, Hu Xijin, a mainstream nationalist pundit, suggested that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) should shoot down Pelosi’s fighter escorts to deter America’s ‘military confrontation’ against ‘China’s sovereignty.’ Hu’s war-provoking suggestion led to heightened public sentiments, as 708,000 spectators obsessively followed Pelosi’s flight to Taiwan and overloaded the website of Flightradar24, an online flight tracking service. When the news broke out that Pelosi landed at Taipei’s Taoyuan Airport, tens of thousands expressed their frustration on the Chinese internet, questioning how Beijing would even allow such an act of humiliation to happen.
The firestorms surrounding Pelosi’s visit to what Beijing’s narratives frame as a renegade province demonstrate Taiwan’s inflated symbolic significance on both sides. Taiwan is now perceived as vital to both Chinese and American interests. Neither the CPC nor the Democratic Party establishment wanted to look weak against their rivals and both saw the accelerator pedal as the only option in this deadly game of chicken. Baudelaire knew that the ‘cake’ in the children’s eyes was, in fact, bread. But an accurate valuation of the delicacy in question is no longer relevant when the fight has commenced.
A Hideous Fight
The over-investment in rhetoric surrounding Taiwan reduce the island to an abstract: a vessel to launch bombers, a liberal democratic bunker to arm, and a ‘cake’ over which a fistfight is deemed inevitable. The people of Taiwan therefore constitute a secondary concern. In this sense, Beijing and Washington are not so different; they share a blatant disregard for potential civilian casualties in their escalatory marches. By creating an incorrigible image out of their strategic rival, both superpowers have ensured that the people in conflict zones will pay the greatest price. For both nations, the deviation from the currently maintained position on Taiwan and on each other would indicate only capitulation and cowardice.
On the American side, as Professor Jessica Chen Weiss recently wrote on Foreign Policy, ‘ever more vehement opposition to China’ seems to be the sole political consensus. In 2019, a prodigious list of US military and intelligence officials, academics, and private-sector executives published an open letter, proclaiming that China intrinsically endangers ‘Pax Americana’ with its ‘grand strategy’ to ‘[corrupt] everything it touches.’ In 2021, professors Hal Brands and Michael Beckley concluded that China’s domestic decline would make its foreign policy strategy increasingly volatile. Under this backdrop, tariffs, investment restrictions, and the list of export controls Biden inherited from Trump has even expanded. Strengthening Taiwan by symbolic or substantive means constitutes a major component of America’s China strategy today. Whether China’s is rising or falling, a large number of American policymakers no longer believe in a peaceful US-China relationship. China’s atrocious human rights record, expanding economic investment worldwide, and an assertive military posture within the Indo-Pacific have further deteriorated the reputation of ‘China doves’ in Washington. Most recently, President Biden spoke to 60 Minutes that U.S. troops would defend Taiwan ‘if in fact there was an unprecedented attack’, further complicating the American policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ he used to support as a Senator.
It takes two to tango, or, as the Chinese say, clapping is impossible with a single hand. ‘America hawks’ have become more influential in China over the past few years. Dubbed as ‘Wolf Warriors’ due to a popular movie, nationalists on all platforms seek to discredit the very legitimacy of ‘Pax Americana’ which many ‘China hawks’ in America want to uphold. Often recycling debates on US domestic politics, Chinese media outlets attack the American right for its tolerance of police brutality and gun violence, while assailing the American left for its seemingly bourgeois concerns, ranging from LGBT rights to green infrastructure. Mainstream voices have repeatedly reminded the public of America’s genocidal, settler colonialism past, thus portraying Washington as a hypocritical ‘world police’ careless of its own moral degeneration. ‘The United States is now the Disunited States,’ declared a People’s Daily editorial, stressing that ‘the world is seeing America going down the tubes and heading towards fractionalization.’ The rhetoric further reflects how emotion is supplanting reason when Chinese opinion leaders discuss Washington.
Let Them Eat Cake?
Poisoning the well only works as a political tactic when the general public perceives the ‘poison’ as irredeemably evil. Under this unfortunate political reality, young radicals and establishment elites in Washington and Beijing alike have chosen to exploit this geopolitical crisis. Being tough against China has mitigated the seemingly irreconcilable enmity between Republicans and Democrats. As the 2022 midterm elections approach, candidates from both major parties have seen rising approval rates from being China hawks. Offering superficial and purely symbolic support to those oppressed by China has become a prerequisite for both progressives and conservatives.
Across the Pacific Ocean, a generation of ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomats have cultivated a set of idiosyncratic and often idiomatic rhetoric, the poor translations of which frequently occupy foreign and domestic news headlines. In the meantime, online witch hunts have commenced to ‘cancel’ businesses and individuals perceived as unpatriotic. ‘I stick to my view but am now more careful in talking positively about the United States,’ writes Professor Wang Wen of Renmin University, ‘When I do, I preface it with a criticism.’ As a result of Pelosi’s visit, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced eight countermeasures, including canceling China-US military dialogues, suspending counternarcotics cooperation, and shutting down talks on climate change. Days later, another Democrat-led congressional delegation landed in Taipei, and the vicious cycle of escalation worsened.
Pursuing domestic agendas while risking a war between superpowers exemplifies political opportunism. Political opportunism, in turn, benefits the Machiavellians at the expense of everyone else. ‘Playing with fire’ is a term used by Chinese Foreign Ministry’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ Spokesperson Zhao Lijian, who has actively delivered threats. Being a pyromaniac makes no one safer—neither the PRC, the USA, nor Taiwan—but it does attract a crowd. A visit to Taiwan, such as the recent ones taken by congressional delegations, is myopic.
Whilst the Democrats have returned unscathed and may see some rewards in 2022, their Republican counterparts are incentivised to adopt a tougher position in 2024, such as recognising Taiwan, according to foreign policy hawk John Bolton. Meanwhile, the PLA, having decided to cut off communication channels with American commanders, now regularly conducts military exercises to reinforce Taiwan’s de jure status as a Chinese province. Under such circumstances, distrust and miscalculation can push China and the United States even closer to the brink of war.
Preventing Full-Scale Conflict
US-China relations are now anchored in symbolic terms such as ‘Taiwanese democracy’ and ‘national rejuvenation.’ Through exchanges of threats, ‘China hawks’ in Washington are trivializing actual concerns on East Asia’s human rights, whilst Beijing’s ‘Wolf Warriors’ are abating China’s momentum to become a responsible global power. Most importantly, a full-scale physical US-China conflict over a piece of ‘cake’ would inflict an unimaginable degree of damage in the region. Letting a war break out when peaceful alternatives are clearly unexhausted indicates policy failures in both the White House and Zhongnanhai, and neither power will emerge in a better condition than the parochial children in Baudelaire’s prose.
Conversely, the world would be made safer with some introspection within Washington and Beijing. Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic establishment need to realize the danger of sanctimonious complacency and self-righteous indignation towards China, particularly in the domestic context. Capitalizing on imprudent foreign policies to out-Trump Trump and out-China China ahead of election cycles will continue to disorientate and consume the Democratic Party, as well as the United States, well after 2022. For the CPC, no decision-maker should be blissfully unaware of the threats of real ruling challenges, namely, the economic slowdown. Putin’s war in Ukraine might also help them to foresee some of the consequences of a potential-ly failing armed reunification campaign. The CPC would have quite a lot to gain by keeping the ‘Wolf Warriors’ and their self-devouring nationalism on a tighter leash.