A Chinese invading of Taiwan would have led to “destructive consequencies” for the world, the island’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told AFP in an interview on Wednesday, considering Taiwan’s planned requirement for the semiconductor industry and global shipping lanes. Mr Wu’s warning happens as democratically ruled Taiwan goes towards a presidential election next year whilst dealing with raised military and political predicament from China throughout the Taiwan Strait.
Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory and has pledged several times to claim it back one day – militarily, if important. Mr Wu said any act of force in opposition to Taiwan would lead to global reverberations. “What we require to do is to explain to the international community that if there’s any problem arising including Taiwan, it’s going to lead to destructive consequences for the entire world,” he said, pointing to the food and fuel shortages and spiralling inflation that were a birth of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The results of a cross-strait conflict are prominently commercial – more than 50 per cent of the world’s shipping containers pass through the 180km-wide waterway parting up Taiwan from mainland China. Freedom of navigation is therefore one of the “pro elements of international safety and prosperity”. Taiwan also holds a near-monopoly on creating semiconductors, the microchips that are the lifeblood of the modern economy and power everything from ordinary coffee machines to complicated weaponry like missiles and defence infrastructure. Rapports between Taiwan and China have suffered since Ms Tsai’s election in 2016, with Beijing rejecting to collaborate with Taipei.