Cross-Strait narrative warfare and the anti-China 'Quad'

In a recently published piece on Taiwan-China relations and the conflicting narratives of the West and China about Taiwan, Jessica Drun 莊宛樺 points out that there is diminishing likelihood of agreement.

For example, for Beijing, the status quo is “One China”—accepted at this point under the “1992 Consensus” formulation. In China’s view, Tsai’s unwillingness to acknowledge the “1992 Consensus” constitutes a break from the status quo. This is despite ... Tsai’s continued reassurance that she remains committed to the status quo—which, in her administration’s view, means building on the achievements of her predecessors. This was clear from Tsai’s first inaugural address, which included a nod to 1992:

"Since 1992, over twenty years of interactions and negotiations across the Strait have enabled and accumulated outcomes which both sides must collectively cherish and sustain; and it is based on such existing realities and political foundations that the stable and peaceful development of the cross-Strait relationship must be continuously promoted."

The Tsai administration’s approach to the status quo aligns with the broader, longstanding DPP position that Taiwan is already an independent country, as the ROC and thus does not need to formally declare itself as such, but which also makes any of Beijing’s OneChina demands a nonstarter.4 This incongruence in views on the status quo has prompted policy responses that have further exacerbated existing differences... (Source)

How to should the West decide what to do?

One can emphasise history, and cultural and geopolitical continuity. This is not irrelevant, but is only part of a debateable picture, as is always the case with politics and geopolitics. History is written by the victor, but existential and utilitarian (consequentialist) political and moral issues are also salient. All political, historical, and geopolitical things considered equal (ceteris paribus): What is the best geostrategic approach given the possible outcomes?

Equally important is utilitarian economic and political pragmatism that abstracts out these considerations and focusses on what is best for the region and people of The Taiwan Strait and Taiwan. This too is open to debate. However, pragmatism probably becomes ill informed and dangerous when detached from realism about such matters as China's not-unjustified sheer determination to retain unity.

China's CPC - which represents China in cultural and humanistic terms far more than Western political pundits commonly surmise or assert - doesn't see relations with Taiwan as bilateral. China does not see cross-strait relations as involving two valid, or even real, geopolitical agents. To be fair - this is arguably the more honest assessment historically, and if we apply the same principles of national and cultural cohesion as are important to all of the nations of the new anti-China 'Quad'.

Frank realism about the fiscal and geostrategic motives and attitudes of the US, CIA, and new anti-China "Quad" is critically important.

The simple facts are that China does have a strong, and probably logically, geopolitically, diplomatically, and historically superior, case. Moreover, China is determined to enforce what they - not unfairly - regard as existing unity. They're also easily capable of enacting such measures with little to no bloodshed, based on historical premises set by similar actions by the old Soviet Union from the 1950s to the 1980s. Although this is by no means guaranteed as an outcome, it's almost certainly (statistically and operationally) safer than a hot war with the new anti-China 'Quad'.

The Quad and the US know this. Given the near inevitability of a military action by the #CPC, their most responsible and sensible response, from a humanistic-utilitarian perspective: stand down. Save lives, prevent bloodshed, avoid a completely unecessary and highly dangerous hot war, and stop equivocating on concepts of freedom and actual motives that are really about selfish economics and geostrategic dominance.

Overtures by Quad countries about democracy and freedom of religion are arguably (very soundly arguably) simply not to be believed by any rational agent. India is all but a religiocratic autocracy that attacks its own citizens on a religious basis, and Australia and the US are clearly econocratic duopolies, with religious and religiocratic abuses and bigotry rife in the US.

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