As Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te embarks on his first international tour, we explore this delicate moment for an island that China still claims as a rogue province. Will China really try to reclaim Taiwan? And how would the island – and its allies – go about its defence? Andrew Mueller speaks with journalist, William Yang, and defence expert, Arthur Ding, in Taipei, plus filmmaker Venessa Hope in London. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sometime between now and the end of this year, the Ryukyu Islands, which trail off the south of Japan, will welcome a contingent of the United States Marine Corps equipped with himars, or High Mobility Artillery rocket systems.
The reason for this deployment is the larger island, which serves as a sort of full stop at the end of the Ryukyu Ellipsis.
Taiwan.
The only imaginable reason for the HIMARS is to protect Taiwan or at least communicate the impression that the US is willing, should it become necessary, to do exactly that.
The extremely concise version of Taiwan's difficulty is as in 1949, the island was the last redoubt of the defeated side in the Chinese civil War.
Since then, Taiwan has effectively, in both senses of that word, functioned as an independent state since.
Since emerging from military dictatorship in the 1980s, Taiwan has become a flourishing democracy and an industrial powerhouse.
By some estimates Perhaps the world's 20th biggest economy.
However, China still officially regards Taiwan as a temporarily rogue province and in recent years especially has been decreasingly subtle about its ambitions of retrieving it and increasingly irked by Taiwan's more independent minded leaders.
This weekend, President Lai Ching Te of Taiwan is touring the Pacific, including stops on the US territory of Guam and the US state of Hawaii.
Some China watchers believe that President Xi Jinping sees Taiwan as the bedrock of his legacy.
They anxiously circle such dates as 2027, the centenary of the People's Liberation Army.
Would China really do it?
How prepared is Taiwan and is the best resolution of the crisis?
No resolution at all.
This is the foreign desk to a lot of them.
They felt like the sense of urgency and desire that the younger generation and the current ruling party is trying to really highlight that unique Taiwan identity.
And the separation of Taiwan and China is something that they feel very uneasy about.
If China really decides to launch an invasion, they might try to launch as quick as possible and as sure as possible before so called foreign force, particularly the United States, will get involved.
For the people of Taiwan, it's Xi Jinping who's changing the status quo.