Almost everyone is wrong about the Venezuela/Taiwan "thing"

China doesn't care about international law, so it isn't going to change whatever its plans may be vis-a-vis invading Taiwan.

MRT Zhongxiao Fuxing, for no reason at all

Living in Taipei, if I didn’t pay attention to international news, I’d barely be aware that President Pedophile’s administration had seized Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Really, you’d hardly know it from living here.

The reaction among commentators, however, has mostly been one of fear for Taiwan’s safety and future. If the US can simply snatch up a foreign president, they say, what’s to stop China from invading Taiwan? What international law exists to ensure it doesn’t happen? Some fear it will “embolden” China (though not necessarily making an attack more likely). The UK’s foreign affairs committee chair has said as much:

On Monday, Emily Thornberry, the chair of the UK’s foreign affairs committee, warned that China and Russia may be emboldened by the lack of condemnation for the US’s actions. But events in the Americas are unlikely to change Beijing’s fundamental thinking with regards to Taiwan.

The latter point is more or less correct, but it contradicts Thornberry’s assertion.

Apparently, it’s being called a “blueprint” for Taiwan on Chinese social media:

By late Monday, topics linked to Trump’s capture of Maduro had received more than 650 million impressions on Weibo, China’s X-like social media platform, with many users suggesting it could offer a template for Beijing’s own potential military takeover of Taiwan.

This is just plain unlikely. At least in my opinion, Beijing’s gonna Beijing no matter what the US does. That is, they don’t really care about international law or norms; if they want to invade Taiwan and think they can win, they will. As the Guardian article continues:

Firstly, although China cares about international narratives with regards to Taiwan, and puts great pressure on other countries to recognise Beijing’s claims on the island, it does not see the matter as being one of international laws.

In the past, I’ve said that the only thing stopping China from invading Taiwan is whether or not they think they can win easily. If they see it as a fairly straightforward invasion with a strong chance of relatively pain-free victory, they’ll go for it.

In that sense, the US invasion may embolden China only insofar as part of their equation on whether an invasion would be achievable or a nightmare centers on whether the US would come to Taiwan’s aid. It might be less likely if the US is wrapped up in Venezuela, or elsewhere.

That’s it, really. No example-setting, no international norms, none of it matters. Can China win? How easily? That’s all that matters to Beijing.

Analyst Yang Kuan-shun offered a different opinion:

On the one hand, of course, there are some voices that are [saying] that the U.S. is not a good actor because it violated the international order that, in some way, it helped establish after World War II,” said Yang Kuang-shun, co-founder of US Taiwan Watch, a think tank. This could further fuel skepticism about the U.S. in Taiwan, he said, at time when there is rising concern among Taiwanese about whether they can count on American protection.

On the other hand, Yang added, the attack demonstrated American willingness to decisively use force beyond its borders, giving hope to some Taiwanese that the U.S. would come to their aid. Taiwan relies on Washington for unofficial support under its policy of strategic ambiguity, which does not clarify whether it would intervene in a conflict with China.

I generally both like and admire Yang’s work, but must respectfully disagree here. The first point is fair enough, but the second implies that the US acts rationally or consistently. It does neither. The US “decisively used force” in Venezuela because some whackadoo in President Pedophile’s cabinet wanted to, not due to any sort of principled stance that it might also apply to Taiwan. How the US feels about Venezuela has no relationship to how it feels about Taiwan.

For it to be otherwise, the current administration would need a moral compass. It has none. It would need to be capable of principled views. It is not.

I agree with Yang’s other point, however:

The Taipei-based analyst Yang Kuang-shun summarised all of the above succinctly in an X post on 8 January: “Taiwanese already view international politics as great-power politics. We don’t romanticise international institutions as being very helpful because we’re just not that included. We see the world very differently because we already know it’s not a fair game for us from the beginning.”

In fact, the one person to get it right doesn’t really discuss how China is taking the Venezuela mess at all — Chris Horton. He notes in the same Observer piece linked above:

Few in Taiwan care about any erosion of international law that may or may not have occurred on 3 January. And why should they? After all, the international order has never had time for Taiwan. Look at it today: it is a sovereign, democratic country, yet is recognised by only 12 governments in the world.

Taiwan is not a member of the UN, and China, because of its sway over the international organisation (and its security council veto, which once belonged to Taiwan’s government), can block Taiwanese membership. What is more, since the signing of secret agreements with Beijing in the 00s, the UN has taken things a step further by referring to Taiwan as “Taiwan, province of China”, despite the fact that Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China.

This shows that the most potent analyses, the ones most likely to make a good point, focus more on what’s going on in Taiwan rather than filtering everything through a China lens.