Taiwan may feel distant to most Europeans, but a Chinese takeover of the island would send shockwaves from Washington to Tokyo, Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister François Chih-chung Wu told Euronews Next.
“If China attacks Taiwan, France, Europe, the United States, and Japan will all be affected. Taiwan will be in a terrible situation — but so will you,” he warned.
The deputy minister pushed back on China’s claim over Taiwan as part of its territory since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. Beijing has never ruled out using force to bring the self-governing island under its control and refuses to recognise it as a sovereign state, insisting it be referred to internationally as “Chinese Taipei,” a designation that reflects China’s position that there is only “one China” and that Taiwan is part of it.
Taiwan itself officially goes by the Republic of China, a name dating back to the government that fled to the island after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communist forces.
Taiwan’s history is far more complex than the narrative that it has always been part of China, Wu said, with the island ruled by the Dutch, the Spanish, the Qing Empire and Japan at different times.
The Qing Dynasty administered part of Taiwan for more than a hundred years, but it was only between 1885 and 1894 that it attached any real importance to the island and established it as a province — a mere ten years of genuine strategic interest that challenges the current Chinese claims of continued sovereignty.
“China was not the only country there,” he said, arguing this history does not justify Beijing’s ambitions.
The island has since developed a technological edge that the world depends on. One company in particular, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), produces more than 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductor chips.
The technology is vital for artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, smartphones and military systems.
The silicon shield
Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang last week called Taiwan the “world’s best supply chain” and the “epicentre of the AI revolution”.
Despite the US and other countries now trying to replicate chip-making back home, it will not catch up in the near future as it takes decades to master, and Taiwan has been building capabilities in precision manufacturing since the 1970s.
“About 70% of all semiconductors are manufactured in Taiwan, as well as 95% of the most advanced chips and 100% of chips destined for artificial intelligence,” Wu said.
“In one square centimetre of semiconductor, the size of a fingertip, it’s very small. In there, the Taiwanese are able to fit more than 10 billion chips. That is our know-how. We have the will to share it with democratic countries, even for the good of humanity,” he added.
Wu said that more than 60,000 containers sail through the Taiwan Strait, the 180-kilometre-wide strait separating the island of Taiwan and the Asian continent. He estimates this is three times the containers that cross the Panama and Suez Canals.
“You can imagine, if China attacks Taiwan or even imposes a blockade around Taiwan, how the interests of the world will be damaged,” he said.
The stability of the region is therefore a “global responsibility,” he said, but added that Taiwan is “not naive”.
“Why would France protect the Taiwanese? We have never been a French country; why should France do that? But France has very important interests in the region, and France is an Indo-Pacific country,” he said, adding that the same applied to the rest of Europe.
Taiwan equally has strong interests in Europe. The advanced photolithography machines used to make semiconductors come from the Netherlands, the precision optics from Germany’s Zeiss, the industrial gases from France’s Air Liquide and chip design tools from Belgium’s IMEC in Leuven.
“All of Europe is inside that one square centimetre of silicon,” he said.
Meanwhile, Taiwanese companies are partnering and launching in Europe. More recently, the Taiwanese giant Foxconn and France’s Thales have a partnership for semiconductors and space data centres.
But as Taiwan grows more attractive to international partners, Wu argues, China’s anxiety intensifies. “China senses it is losing Taiwan — so it is trying every available means to take it,” he said. “In the Chinese mindset, once Chinese, always Chinese. That is a huge problem.”
Despite the tensions, Taiwan’s economy has flourished, with its stock market overtaking Germany and France, according to data compiled by Bloomberg this year.
“Fear, in a way, is not a bad thing,” the official reflects. “Because we are afraid, we prepare. Taiwan has been threatened by China for 70 years, and we have still achieved democracy, still become prosperous,” Wu said.
Asked about the May summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, at which Xi reportedly staked China’s claim over Taiwan, Wu said “for us, American policy has not changed at all” and that following the meeting the US Speaker of the House immediately afterwards pledged American support for the island.
Connection to Europe
Despite the US being one of Taiwan’s main allies, Europe is of strong importance for it, too.
“I believe Europeans are beginning to realise that we cannot let China choose our friends,” he said.
”Europe naturally has the right to choose its friends, and choosing friends does not necessarily mean formal diplomatic relations.”
But he admitted it was difficult to build ties to Europe and said: “China does everything to block us.”
“A country as important as Taiwan should normally have the opportunity to discuss all important issues with you in a normal way, but we cannot do that, so naturally it is difficult.
“But looking once again at the results, there are more and more opportunities for Taiwan and Europe to discuss things on a low profile. This is also thanks to human ingenuity — we can imagine all kinds of formulas to try to work together,” he added.
He stressed, “Taiwan does not need to declare independence,” and it is not Hong Kong, as it has its own army and foreign policy.
“We are forced to maintain a very difficult balance: defending our democracy and our way of life on one side, not provoking China too far on the other, and navigating a world that, even in trying to be neutral, ends up being neutral in China’s favour.”
But Wu is not asking Europe to go to war for Taiwan. He asks for friendship.
“When you get married, you do not ask your spouse whether they are prepared to die for you. You build a relationship. You work together. And a natural force grows from that,” he said.
“There is a Taiwanese story being written right now and I believe very much in Taiwanese resilience.”