What Happens If China Attacks Taiwan?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Mike Baker** (0:30)
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It's Wednesday, the 1st of July. Oh, halfway through the year. Time flies when you're dealing with multiple global conflicts and crises. Welcome to The President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage.
And today, we're continuing our series of special intelligence briefings, taking a brief step back from the daily headlines for the next couple of days to examine some of the biggest national security and geopolitical questions facing the world. It's a brief respite from the minute-to-minute daily headlines. Today, we're turning our focus to what many consider to be the next major global flashpoint, Taiwan. And we're asking the question, well, will China actually invade Taiwan?
It's a question that resurfaces whenever tensions flare in the Taiwan Strait.
And they flare on an almost continuous basis these days. After Chinese military exercises across the island, after following the major arms sales from the US, after visits by American lawmakers, or whenever Beijing issues another warning that reunification can't be delayed forever. In recent years, those concerns have only intensified. China's military has grown dramatically in size and capabilities. Chinese aircraft and naval vessels now operate around Taiwan with increasing frequency. PLA naval vessels are now on almost constant deployment around the island. Meanwhile, American military planners have repeatedly warned that Beijing may be accelerating preparations for a future conflict.
But before we can answer whether China could successfully invade Taiwan, we should first revisit how the island became separated from mainland China in the first place. To understand why Taiwan remains one of the most dangerous flashpoints in the world today, we have to go back more than 75 years, back to the aftermath of World War II.
At the time, China was emerging from years, a brutal conflict against Imperial Japan. But even as that war ended, another struggle was entering its final phase, a civil war between two competing visions for China's future. On one side stood Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. On the other stood Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist government known as the Kuomintang. The fighting had begun years earlier, paused during the Japanese invasion, and then resumed with full force after World War II. And by 1949, it was clear which side was winning. Mao's Communist forces swept across the mainland, capturing city after city and steadily destroying the nationalists' ability to resist. Facing defeat, Chiang Kai-shek and roughly 2 million soldiers, government officials and supporters fled across the Taiwan Strait to the island of Taiwan. On October 1st, 1949, Mao declared the founding of the People's Republic of China in Beijing. But, the nationalists didn't surrender. Instead, they established their government in Taiwan, where they continued operating under the name Republic of China. For years, both governments claimed to be the legitimate rulers of all China. Beijing insisted Taiwan was a rebellious province that would eventually be reunified. Taiwan maintained that it remained the rightful Chinese government and that the communists were the illegitimate regime.
What might have happened next is impossible to know, but the Cold War quickly changed the equation. The US viewed Communist China as a strategic threat and eventually became Taiwan's primary security partner. American military support helped ensure that Mao never attempted a large scale invasion of the island. Several crises erupted in the Taiwan Strait during the 50s, but none escalated into a full scale invasion. Over time, the political realities evolved. Most countries eventually recognized Beijing as the government of China, including the US in 1979
Taiwan gradually transformed from an authoritarian state into one of Asia's most vibrant democracies. And today, it governs itself, elects its own leaders, maintains its own military, and functions in nearly every respect as an independent country. But Beijing has never changed its fundamental position. The Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, still considers Taiwan part of China. Chinese leaders have repeatedly stated that reunification is inevitable. And current Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made clear that he views reunification as an essential component of what he calls the, quote, great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.