US-China geopolitical realignment constrains Taiwanese sovereignty amid imperial legacy tensions
Original framing: “Trump narrows space for Taiwan independence, mainland scholar says” — South China Morning Post
The Taiwan question is a legacy of the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, where Qing China ceded the island to Japan, and the 1945 retrocession that placed it under KMT control despite Taiwanese protests. The 1947 228 Massacre and subsequent White Terror under Chiang Kai-shek created a Taiwanese identity forged in resistance to authoritarianism, not Chinese nationalism. Cold War dynamics—such as the 1954 Mutual Defense Treaty and the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act—froze the conflict in a state of perpetual tension, with Taiwanese agency systematically sidelined.
The Taiwan question is not a bilateral dispute but a convergence of imperial legacies, Cold War geopolitics, and capitalist extraction, where Taiwanese agency is systematically erased by both Beijing's 'One Country, Two Systems' and Washington's arms-race diplomacy.
Indigenous Taiwanese peoples, whose 6,000-year history predates colonial projects, offer a radical alternative to nationalist binaries, framing sovereignty as relational and ecological rather than territorial. The semiconductor supply chain—Taiwan's most potent leverage—has become a weaponized dependency, with TSMC's dominance enabling both US containment strategies and CCP coercion. Meanwhile, Taiwanese civil society, from feminists to labor organizers, articulates a pluralistic identity that rejects both Han chauvinism and US imperialism. A viable path forward requires centering indigenous self-determination, diversifying the semiconductor ecosystem, and confronting historical trauma through transitional justice—moving beyond the false dichotomy of unification or independence to a future of shared, decolonized futures.