Taiwan: Indispensable yet abandoned

We live in a post-morality world that has perfected the art of forgetting while remembering.

- AMRITESH MUKHERJEE

Month after month, year after year, annexations continue, bombings remain ceaseless, ceasefires come and go, and the world, which once promised to “never again” let it happen, actively propagates such violence. The world watches, condemns, and then moves on to the next crisis. In this world of collective amnesia, what’s one more Ukraine, one more Palestine? One more Taiwan?

Chris Horton’s Ghost Nation chooses a different premise. The book assumes, correctly, that we live in a world where moral arguments have been rendered impotent. Morality should be reason enough, but Mr Horton doesn’t solely appeal to our better angels, for he assumes they've been permanently grounded. Instead, he speaks to our more reliable motivations: Economic anxiety, the fear of systemic collapse.

What if China were to annex Taiwan tomorrow? Taiwan produces over 60 per cent of the world’s semiconductors and 90 percent of the most advanced chips — every smartphone, every car, every data centre, therefore, depends on Taiwanese ingenuity. “In today’s hyper-globalised world, nearly every country, from basic commodities exporters up to the most developed economies, would experience an economic pain that would make the recent pandemic seem mild,” Mr Horton writes.

But to understand how Taiwan became this indispensable yet abandoned nation, Mr Horton traces a pattern as old as the island itself. Beginning with 17th-century records, Taiwan was passed between empires like a trophy, from Chinese dynasties, Dutch traders, Spanish colonisers to Japanese occupiers and ultimately Chiang Kai-shek’s retreating Nationalists, each bringing one form of exploitation or the other. The island has never belonged to itself.