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y the end of this year, in
an unambiguous declara-
tion of its status as a great
power, China will formally
put its first domestically made aircraft
carrier into active service. But Beijing
is also keen to acquire another offshore
asset: Taiwan.
In August 1950, General Douglas
MacArthur, Supreme Commander for
the A llied Powers in Japan, controver-
sially declared Taiwan an “unsinkable
aircraft carrier”, a few months after it
had broken from the newly communist
mainland and was on its way to
becoming part of America’s efforts to
contain ‘Red China’. A rising China
wants the island back.
The Taiwanese have been watching
this summer’s protests in Hong Kong
nervously, and their opposition to the
prospect of Beijing rule has hardened:the Pentagon recently approved a
potential sale to Taiwan of US weaponr y
worth $2 billion, a move that outraged
the People’s Republic.
All of this was shaped by a mode of
analysis that developed during the last
period of great power rivalry in the late
19th centur y: geopolitics. A s we enter
a new era dominated by rival great
powers, the use of geography to forge
foreign policy and military strategy is
back in vogue. China insists that Taiwan
is a breakaway province, but there is
another reason it wants to reclaim the
island. As an ‘aircraft carrier’, Taiwan is
not only unsinkable – it’s also perfectly
positioned to command access to the
South China Sea, and sea lanes to South
Korea, Japan and the Pacific. As host to
the US Taiwan Defense Command, it
used to make life ver y dif ficult for the
Chinese navy – but if the People’sB
Geography of power
The political and military rise of China to ‘great
power’ status was prophesied by geopolitical
thinkers over a century ago – and now China is
studying those ideas to help plan its next moves
BY PHIL TINLINE