Posted by Ken Waldron on September 2, 2024, 1:18 pm
Informative post by
Nury Vittachi @NuryVittachi 9h
THE LIGHTS ARE GOING out in Taiwan. Literally. The island is facing massive challenges which are largely underreported in the western world. These are causing the 23 million population to resume the drift towards a positive relationship with mainland China.
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1) ALL ENERGY IS IMPORTED There's widespread dismay that the unpopular rulers, the US-backed Democratic Progressive Party, can't keep the lights on. A study in 2022 showed 313 power cuts. And Taiwan is supposed to be a modern, hi-tech community.
Why? What appears to be a crucial misjudgement in the design of the island's energy supply map is sending warning signals of danger ahead.
Taiwan's US-friendly leaders opted to differentiate itself from mainland China's system of growing a network of modern nuclear power plants.
Instead, Taiwan opted for the western model of hostility to nuclear power, starting on a program of decommissioning nuclear plants in favor of relying mainly on liquid natural gas, or LNG—the energy source the US supplied to Germany after the mystery destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines.
The result is that Taiwan is almost entirely dependent on imports for its energy needs. Fully 97.73 percent comes from overseas.
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INSTANT VICTORY If US agents in Taiwan ever gave the DPP the go-ahead to declare independence, the mainland Chinese could subdue the island easily by simply blockading fuel deliveries.
Not a single shot would have to be fired.
It's no surprise that Taiwan's people are unhappy about the regular black outs, as they hit individual families rather than businesses – more electricity is used by industrial plants than the entire population.
And the island's chosen industry is another problem.
2) EGGS IN ONE BASKET Taiwan's widely celebrated semiconductor industry is turning out to be an Achille's heel. Over-encouragement from the island's US-focused ruling politicians means that more than 40 per cent of total business activity is tied to a single activity – a widely risky position for any society.
Furthermore, chipmaking is an inherently volatile industry, swinging between shortages and gluts—and that's BEFORE Washington decreed that decision-making should be divorced from business concerns and determined largely by political considerations.
This has created multiple areas of concern. Most notably, the US has forced high level chipmakers everywhere to stop selling high end chips to China—a move which directly harms profits of all chip-makers and shrinks their markets, including those on the island of Taiwan.
DANGER AHEAD Furthermore, the move forced mainland Chinese scientists to make their own high-end chips, and they are proving better at it than expected. While Taiwan makes about 46 per cent of the world's semiconductors, mainland China is now the second largest manufacturer, producing about 26 per cent.
If we focus on 300mm fabrications, mainland China and the island of Taiwan are neck and neck, with 22 per cent each.
Also, other nations are also now making high-end chips, including the US itself.
Taiwan is discovering what the EU has already discovered: to partner with the US is often to embark on a path of long-term self-harm.
3) THE PEOPLE WANT CHANGE Washington's tight political grip on the legally Chinese island has gone, as far as the people are concerned. At the last election, a clear majority of Taiwanese voters rejected the US candidate, giving DPP leader William Lai Ching-te a hollow victory. Six out of ten people who voted, voted against him.
The lack of public support for the DPP is higher still if we consider the number of people who didn't vote at all, leaving him with less than 30 per cent of ballots from registered votes. This was hidden by the western mainstream media, but is significant. It is the first time this century that there were more votes against the winning candidate than for him or her.
The DPP is known for overriding the wishes of the people of Taiwan to keep its US masters happy (remember the tainted pork scandal?). With minority support and loss of political control, the party can't do that any more.
4) DISINFORMATION The final problem is the distorted information environment that surrounds Taiwan. If you Google the place, you'll get a long, long list of western media reports that report, in a tone of outrage, that the Chinese "claim" the island.
You'll also get links to vast numbers of US think tank write-ups and feature articles misrepresenting Taiwan as a terrified group of people fearing mainland missiles, and who want the US to nobly interfere.
But the truth is very different. Taiwan is legally part of China, as the constitutions of both places confirm. So do official statements put out by the United Nations, the United States, and other countries.
If you visit Taiwan, and talk to business people and investors there, you get a very different story. Relationships between the people and their cousins and business partners over the water are good, and surprisingly active.
TWO-WAY TRAFFIC The DPP's official narrative says that the number of Taiwanese who live and work on the mainland is about 163,000 and falling. Trouble is, nobody believes this.
Financial analysts say the number is far higher, at least 1.2 million and as high as two million. The town of Kunshun, near Shanghai, for example, has, by itself more than 100,000 Taiwanese residents. And there are many other places like that. There are multiple flights and ferry journeys between Taiwan and mainland China every day.
More than a third of all Taiwanese exports go to Mainland China. And that's after the number of transactions were depressed by political interference. As the fearmongering subsides, that number may rise.
Furthermore, a lot of the false reporting is transparently misleading. For example, the Financial Times printed a graph showing that mainland China spends more on weapons than the province of Taiwan. This is like saying: "The UK spends more on weapons than the Isle of Wight." Of course it does.
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FUTURE: BOTH SIDES WANT SAME THING As the people of Taiwan educate themselves, and have stopped listening to the United States, now seen worldwide as a rogue nation for its blind support of the destruction and slaughter in Gaza, realism has dawned.
Surveys show that that the people of Taiwan and the people of mainland China want the same thing – the continuation of the peaceful status quo until both sides say that they are ready to move the relationship forwards. The endless fake "invasion" deadlines from the western press have no relevance at all.
The only thing China needs to keep people happy on both sides of the Straits is the patience to sit tight and wait. As Lao Tzu said, to turn a glass of muddy water into a glass of clear water, just add patience.
. [This post written by Nury Vittachi originally appeared in Bastille Post Global]
on September 2, 2024, 1:18 pm