Ian Williams Ian Williams

Inside Taiwan’s plan to thwart Beijing

Taipei

 

Nowhere is watching Russia’s faltering attempt to crush its democratic neighbour more closely than Taiwan. The Ukraine war is seen in Taipei as a demonstration of how determined resistance and the ability to rally a global alliance of supporters can frustrate a much larger and heavily armed rival. Taiwan has spent the past few years planning how it would cope if China attacked. It is developing a doctrine of defence warfare right out of the Ukrainian playbook.

China was carrying out military exercises off the east coast of the island last week when I met Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister. ‘They keep circling in that area,’ Wu says. ‘Nonstop for two weeks, and it is very threatening.’ There were also reports of China carrying out missile training exercises in its remote northwest, simulating attacks on a Taiwan naval base. ‘We are on the front line against authoritarianism,’ he adds. ‘The reaction to Ukraine here is very strong because it is a mirror image of what might happen to Taiwan in the future.’

Joe Biden makes the same argument. The theme of his five-day trip to Asia this week was that world affairs are being redrawn and the dividing line is not Russia vs the West but ‘autocracy vs democracy’. When asked, the US President said that America would defend Taiwan – a break from the official policy of strategic ambiguity.

No democratic country is more aware of Taiwan’s role in the ‘front line against authoritarianism’ than Japan, whose Senkaku Islands are much closer to Taiwan than the Japanese mainland. The islands are also claimed by China and would become essentially indefensible if Taiwan fell. Fumio Kishida, Japan’s new prime minister, has slapped sanctions on Russia and joined Germany in pledging to double his country’s defence spending. Kishida was in London earlier this month, talking with Boris Johnson about a Japan-UK defence pact.

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