Increasingly Urgent Geopolitical Similarities Between Taiwan And Ukraine

Amidst the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, people in Taiwan are beginning to fear parallels with China. As the international community is very aware of, Ukraine, which was once a key territory in the USSR, is facing an invasion of Russian military forces. While there exists a separatist movement that would prefer to be part of Russia, there has been continuous disagreement about these distinctions — i.e., what territory belongs to whom. Regardless, Russian military troops are assaulting major population centers and the conflict is increasingly urgent. It could become a similar conflict for Taiwan: mainland China sees Taiwan as part of its own, but many Taiwanese disagree that this is the case, and rightfully so. The languages are not the same, though there is some overlap, and the cultures are quite different as well. Thus, it is relatively easy to see how there may be some resemblance in the geopolitical implications of these conflicts.

Hua Chunying, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said that, “Taiwan is not Ukraine. Taiwan has always been an inalienable part of China. This is an indisputable legal and historical fact.” That said, Chinese media and officials have made differing remarks about Taiwan and its similarity to Ukraine. Even though it might not become the same situation with the same level of violence, it is worth considering to what extent it may not be portrayed as such because China already views Taiwan as part of itself. This means that China, the obviously bigger nation of the two, may be able to find a way to justify an invasion of Taiwan.  

Taiwan, which was first under control of China for a relatively short period of time, was then ceded to Japan after the First Sino-Japanese War. After World War Two, Japan ceded control over Taiwan back to China. As written by the New York Times, “Though the comparison is not perfect, Taiwan, like Ukraine, has long lived in the shadow of a large and overbearing neighbor. Both [Xi Jinping] and [President Vladimir V. Putin] have appealed to nostalgia for a glorious imperial past to justify their present-day territorial claims.” In other words, Russia’s attempt to gain back control of Ukraine presents a similar geopolitical dynamic as that between China and Taiwan. Of course, the issue is not this simple, and the conflict in Ukraine has distinctions to that in Taiwan. Despite this, it is important to understand these relationships alongside one another, since they provide some insight into the relationships of smaller nations to their larger counterparts that once had control over them. 

In terms of what this means for peace in both regions, as of now, China has not taken any actions against Taiwan or its separation, while there is obvious ongoing violence in Ukraine. Nonetheless, it is necessary to pay attention to the worries of many Taiwanese and not to underestimate these geopolitical similarities. Ultimately, the trend of bigger nations dominating smaller ones is something with which the West, or rather the imperial core, is very familiar. The West should be wary of how it approaches these conflicts, since it is not exempt from imperial practices and land-grabs. Rather than making a moral claim about Russia or China, it may be more helpful to understand these relationships in terms of global systems of power and hegemony. Although forcing large nations to recognize their power (and thereby to cede some of it) is a noble goal, the relationship between big and small states has been repeated throughout history: we see it today in Ukraine, and we could potentially see it in Taiwan.

 

Related