- Shipping[0]: Between China and Taiwan is a very popular shipping lane. Anything that comes from anywhere except the North America likely comes through or near there. This is why they are also interested in Singapore and Indonesia. See the 9-dash line map[1], which shows where they claim control over the seas, and compare that to the shipping map on [0]. I should also reference the Kuril Islands[1.5] as an analogy and a more critical situation between Russian and Japan (Japanese control could lock Russia out, hence their deep concern).
- TSMC: I'm not sure I need to cite the chip wars as there's an article on the front page probably every week and has been so for the last 4 years.
- Territoriality control: It gives them a greater vantage over territories, especially into the ocean. Though reference first point.
- Political: Taiwan and Hong Kong (not so much Macau, considered "resolved") have represented the antithesis to the CCP's way of thinking and propaganda. Xi and the CCP have long been touting the line that democracy is not possible in Asia and specifically in China[2,3,4] noting that "the fruit looks the same but the taste is different." Taiwan specifically demonstrates a counter to their claim that the people can be free AND prosperous at the same time. But so do other surrounding countries, but there's a larger gap and these people see large gaps between cultures where us Westerns may not see any (tensions have long been high between China, Japan, and Korea and they've been warring for centuries. Particularly bad in WW2 btw). I should also note that which ever Chinese leader "passifies the dissenters" will go down in history as doing something that no previous leader could and be a great show of strength. So there's internal politics as well that may be far less important to those of us on the outside.
I'd say these are the major aspects but each one is far deeper than this comment would lead you to believe and there are of course other factors as well.
> The answer to this puzzle might lie in the confusion between two different Chinese expressions which are pronounced exactly the same: “concentration of power” (集权, or jiquan in pinyin) and “autocracy” (极权, also pronounced jiquan)... Therefore, “concentration of power”, not “autocracies”, should be what Xi referred to in his call with Biden.
I think many will even question if the distinction is meaningful here. There is also a link [5] that quotes Xi about how to describe a democracy:
> Whether a country is democratic or not should only be judged by the people of that country, and there is no place for a small number of outsiders to point fingers at this or that
Which again, feels off since his argument would conclude that the DPRK is Democratic and I think few would agree. We have a long history of watching autocracies and dictators refer to their systems as "democratic"
- TSMC: I'm not sure I need to cite the chip wars as there's an article on the front page probably every week and has been so for the last 4 years.
- Territoriality control: It gives them a greater vantage over territories, especially into the ocean. Though reference first point.
- Political: Taiwan and Hong Kong (not so much Macau, considered "resolved") have represented the antithesis to the CCP's way of thinking and propaganda. Xi and the CCP have long been touting the line that democracy is not possible in Asia and specifically in China[2,3,4] noting that "the fruit looks the same but the taste is different." Taiwan specifically demonstrates a counter to their claim that the people can be free AND prosperous at the same time. But so do other surrounding countries, but there's a larger gap and these people see large gaps between cultures where us Westerns may not see any (tensions have long been high between China, Japan, and Korea and they've been warring for centuries. Particularly bad in WW2 btw). I should also note that which ever Chinese leader "passifies the dissenters" will go down in history as doing something that no previous leader could and be a great show of strength. So there's internal politics as well that may be far less important to those of us on the outside.
I'd say these are the major aspects but each one is far deeper than this comment would lead you to believe and there are of course other factors as well.
[0] https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:115.7/cent...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line
[1.5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands_dispute
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/china-politics-xi-jinping/xi...
[3] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3142130/xi...
[4] (this one responds to [3] but is also funny) https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3180490/why-xi-...
> The answer to this puzzle might lie in the confusion between two different Chinese expressions which are pronounced exactly the same: “concentration of power” (集权, or jiquan in pinyin) and “autocracy” (极权, also pronounced jiquan)... Therefore, “concentration of power”, not “autocracies”, should be what Xi referred to in his call with Biden.
I think many will even question if the distinction is meaningful here. There is also a link [5] that quotes Xi about how to describe a democracy:
> Whether a country is democratic or not should only be judged by the people of that country, and there is no place for a small number of outsiders to point fingers at this or that
Which again, feels off since his argument would conclude that the DPRK is Democratic and I think few would agree. We have a long history of watching autocracies and dictators refer to their systems as "democratic"
[5] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3152389/xi-...