The Taiwan question will become central to foreign policy

The Taiwan question risks becoming one of the central topics for the foreign policy of the year that has just begun. Beijing has never given up on the prospect of reuniting the island of Formosa within the administration of China, without any requirement of independence, but as a simple province. For all the Chinese governors, who have succeeded each other over time, the question can be summarized in the impossibility of renouncing the vision of a unique and indivisible China, which can not contemplate portions of territory outside the jurisdiction and administration of Beijing, without tolerance. In this perspective Hong Kong has also returned, which, beyond, of external conditions, is seeing progressive eroding the democratic concessions that the transition from the United Kingdom to China had to be guaranteed. For Taiwan, however, the speech is different: the island nation maintains its own autonomy gained thanks to the outcome of the conflict of 1949, when the communists lost power on the island. The question of Formosa is central to Chinese domestic politics, because it can not be the subject of repression, as happened for Tibet or for the lands of Chinese Muslims, where the double means of violence and invasion of the most faithful ethnic groups were used in Beijing, to cancel dissent and repress any rebellion; Taiwan, thanks also to its geographical position, has institutions totally independent from Beijing and also the international recognition of some countries as an independent nation. This state of affairs is experienced as a deep wound by the current Chinese president, such as to become a staple in his political program. Xi Jinping, however, can not directly threaten Taiwan and in fact confines itself to coaxing the one, which anyway considers a Chinese province, with practical and also economic arguments, remaining within the boundaries of the use of the great Chinese financial resources. In reality to have entered so clearly in the question, it appears an unusual fact for Chinese caution, despite the fact that Taiwan is considered part of China, it remains true that its behavior is in all respects similar to an independent nation. Taiwan has never formally declared its independence from China, but the incumbent government has repeatedly expressed its willingness to proceed in this direction and this represents the real danger for Chinese prestige, both outwardly, but above all inward . If the Chinese president spoke of peaceful means to promote reunification, he also talked about how the declaration of independence would bring obvious economic disadvantages to the traffics of Taiwan, threatening, not too hiddenly, to increase the tension along the two sides of the channel that separates the island from China. Xi Jinping has come to threaten the use of force to defend what he considers the exclusive sphere of action for Beijing. This message is clearly aimed at the United States, which is Taiwan's largest military ally and intends to use every means possible to counter China's political growth internationally, especially from the standpoint of economic competition. Trump, who wants to divest himself to some theaters of world war to concentrate the country's efforts on issues considered more important, has understood well, as, moreover Obama already, that the area of ​​the Eastern Pacific has assumed ever greater importance, both for the quantity and the quality of the traffics of goods, both for the essential functional reasons for contending China's supremacy in the area; as well as having a symbolic value, operating directly in what Beijing considers its area of ​​exclusive influence, there is also a practical value very much considered by the strategists of the White House, which is represented by the possibility of going directly to oppose the Chinese interests on the borders of Beijing . This is also part of the attempt that will increasingly take the form of trying to take North Korea away from Chinese influence, through economic concessions and the tolerance of possession of atomic arsenals. Here then is the importance of the Taiwan question, which forces China to play in advance and no longer rely on the usual waiting tactics; on what the developments will be, it is not possible to make sure predictions, except that Formosa will surely be one of the focal points of the upcoming foreign policy.