Ukraine-Taiwan comparisons don’t stand up to scrutinyThe invasion of Ukraine doesn’t mean Taiwan is more vulnerable, unless the West fails to respond appropriately
By David Spencer, Taiwan News, Contributing Writer
2022/02/24
KAOHSIUNG (Taiwan News) — The world watched on in horror on Thursday as Russian shells dropped on key strategic locations in Ukraine and Russian troops rolled across the border to occupy the country.
On Monday evening, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his country would recognize the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and send what he laughably described as “peacekeeping” troops into sovereign Ukrainian territory to defend these two self-declared separatist states.
As he did so, one of the trending subjects on Twitter around the world was #Taiwan.
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Some observers have even speculated that China could use the focus on the situation in Ukraine as an opportunity to invade Taiwan now.
These views betray a misunderstanding of the dynamic between Taiwan and China which is wholly different to the situation between Russia and Ukraine.
Operational complexitiesFirstly, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is vastly more complex and challenging than a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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The idea that any invasion of Taiwan could be imminent is also not credible. Russian troops have been observed massing on the borders of Ukraine for months. Satellite footage has revealed no similar increase in Chinese troops near the coastline where any invasion of Taiwan would have to be launched from.
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The separatism paradoxThe CCP will also be far from comfortable with the pretext Putin has chosen to use for his invasion of Ukraine.
While citing Russia’s historic control of Ukraine from the Soviet era is straight out of the CCP playbook, choosing to back two self-declared independent regions is an endorsement of separatism that Xi will be far from comfortable with.
The CCP officially considers Taiwan to be a separatist province and it frequently uses separatism as an excuse to crack down on Chinese-controlled regions such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia, not to mention Hong Kong.
It will be interesting to see how Chinese state-controlled media covers the invasion of Ukraine in the coming days and also how the CCP’s official messaging tries to thread the needle on this particular issue.
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Source:
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4454220
