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Just to help me clarify, the tariffs that are being levied between China and America, do or do not also apply to Taiwan? I’ve never fully understood how the separation of Taiwan and China is made since it seems to be such a touchy subject.

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In general, the US maintains unofficial diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which means that although the US does not officially recognize the government of Taiwan, it is subject to different tariffs than those imposed on China. Similarly, tariffs imposed by Taiwan are set by the ROC, not the PRC, and therefore are totally distinct from this trade war.

More information can be found in this position statement from the Department of State:

https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35855.htm

Interesting, so in that case, does Taiwan benefit from this ongoing trade war, or is the heightened tension and fear of political/military escalation nullifying any benefit that might be felt?

> Taiwan benefit from this ongoing trade war

Taiwan is hurt indirectly. Taiwan has invested heavily on the mainland China and manufactures there.

Many Chinese products exported to US have very low Chinese value added. Chinese manufacturer buys Taiwanese, Japanese or US made components, assembles them and sell them to the US.

For many high-tech products, Chinese value added may be just 20% of the price of the product. Chinese tariffs hit everyone in the value chain. Even the US.

For companies, those who have much bigger stakes in China are suffering (e.g., Foxconn). But there are also companies benefiting from the trade war since they don't incur the extra cost like their China-based competitors. The companies like TSMC are barely affected since they have a reasonably low percentage of yields in China. For labor/domestic businesses in general, they benefit from it like India and other SEA countries because the global supply chains are coming to diversify and they are attracting more manufacturing investment now.

>(e.g., Foxconn)

That is not strightly true because there isn't really an alternative to Foxconn in size and scale. But in other industry where there are lots of alternative around the world, the heat are quite intense.

Most of the world considers Taiwan (a.k.a. "Republic of China") to be a distinct country.

The mainland Chinese government disagrees.

I don't know about these particular tariffs, but I believe the U.S. would not consider tariffs aimed at (mainland) China to apply to Taiwan.

The RoC consider themselves the rightful "China" too. Some Taiwanese politicians have advocated declaring themselves an independent country but that's never been the official government position.

Eh? Chen Shuibian did declare independence, like 10 times

> The RoC consider themselves the rightful "China" too.

That's a minority/extremity opinion which isn't remotely prevalent even among those who feel intimate with China. It used to be the 'political-correct' belief held by the former authoritarian ruling party. But it's not considered a rational worldview anymore after its democratic modernization.

Most of the world? Not in any official sense.

> Most of the world? Not in any official sense.

There are things that are de facto true, even if they're not de jure true.

One things that can be confusing/frustrating to many people about geopolitics is that there's a substantial body of "agreed upon" fiction. These are positions that are held officially by numerous, competing state actors that, while factually untrue, hold value to each.

The status of Taiwan is one. Israel's nuclear status is another famous example.

While the common sense reaction is "everybody knows it, why pretend?" those fictions generally exist because they help maintain delicate balances and order between parties that are generally at odds with one another.

What it comes down to is that it'd be lovely if we could all just say openly and outright that mainland China and Taiwan are separate entities, because, in practice, they are. But it's also pretty swimming for the global community for the PPRC and ROC to both claim that they're the real China while everyone does business with each other anyway. So while it's true that they're distinct and it's also true that everyone knows that to be the case, everyone also wins out to varying degrees by officially pretending that it isn't the case.

Since both Chinas claim the entirety of China including Taiwan, no government can officially recognise both. But in practice that means governments recognise one China officially and deal with the other unofficially. Taiwan obviously is not under the PRC government's control and the US tariffs don't apply to it. The US is a close ally of Taiwan.

> The US is a close ally of Taiwan

Heh. Exactly how close an ally is yet to be tested in any meaningful way. No U.S. aircraft carrier group has transited the Taiwan Strait since 2007. Some would forecast that no U.S. carrier group will transit - or finish transiting - that strait ever again.

Its up to the US who to put its own import tariffs on, so the US can just say "imports from China" but not directly from Taiwan.

China may be able to force import tariffs on goods imported by Taiwan (idk not an expert) but I bet Taiwan imports relatively little directly from the US?

Just after World War II, the Communists took over China from the previous government. The previous government ran to the island of Taiwan, which had been part of China. If I understand correctly, you now have two different governments, one on the mainland and one on Taiwan, both of which claim to be the government of China, and both of which claim to rule all of China, and both of which claim that there is only one China.

Other nations play pretend to various degrees, trying to placate (mainland) China without too much swallowing their own pride in not being China's lapdogs. But they're effectively two separate countries.

So: The tariffs being applied to China do not apply to Taiwan. However, Trump seems to be throwing tariffs at several targets lately; he may or may not have applied some to Taiwan.

The current government of Taiwan does not claim sovereignty over the mainland. They still call themselves "Republic of China" though. Indeed most countries do not recognize Taiwan to placate the mainland regime which adheres to the "One China" policy of threatening war over official separation by Taiwan.

Sometimes you wonder how things can stay broken for so long.

> Sometimes you wonder how things can stay broken for so long.

Taiwan doesn't want the mainland's government, and the mainland doesn't want Taiwan's government.

If Hong Kong had been militarily defensible, it'd be in the same situation.

> If Hong Kong had been militarily defensible, it'd be in the same situation.

If the UK had really wanted to keep Hong Kong, could it have militarily defended it? No doubt the geography is less than favourable; but, keeping in mind that UK and PRC are nuclear powers, would regaining Hong Kong be worth the risk of war between two nuclear states? PRC might well have decided it wasn't worth that risk.

But in reality, the UK had no real interest in keeping Hong Kong, and were more than happy to hand it over to PRC. (Yes, there was a treaty saying they had to give back a big chunk after 99 years, but if the UK really wanted to get out of that, they could have found a solution – e.g. if they hadn't switched recognition from ROC to PRC, they could have asked ROC for a lease extension. Or, they could have made their switch of recognition from ROC to PRC conditional on PRC granting them perpetual sovereignty over the whole of Hong Kong.)

> If the UK had really wanted to keep Hong Kong, could it have militarily defended it?

The Chinese would not have to have fired a shot to make HK surrender. HK was then a city with more than 6 million citizens, which was entirely dependent on water imported from the mainland. The treaty that allowed the importation of all that water was only set until the end of the lease, and the Chinese very clearly stated that they had no interest in extending it.

Also, earlier when HK expressed some interest in investing into desalinization, the Chinese threatened to immediately cut off the water supply if it seemed like the HK local government would have actually tried to build up enough water resources to make them not dependent on the mainland.

The result of shutting down the taps would have been millions dead within a week. Keeping HK British would have required a massive invasion of China by the UK, just to secure water. I don't see that as very likely.

Hong Kong only began importing water from PRC in 1960. This was as a solution to Hong Kong's water shortages. However, there were other possible solutions – e.g., nuclear powered desalination. Importing water from PRC was the cheapest option, and the UK was more interested in saving money than maximising independence from PRC. If they had prioritised water independence, they would have never begun water imports.

Hong Kong also had its own desalination plant 1975-1981. Why was it shut down – because of pressure from the PRC government? Or because it was significantly more expensive than importing water? I don't know for sure, but my impression is the later was a much bigger factor than the former.

[getting far from the TSMC topic]

If the UK had thought this through, they would have setup real democracy in Hong Kong a generation before the lease ended, instead of doing the colonial "high commissioner" thing. A legitimate Hong Kong government would have survived a lot longer with their people's support.

One could argue in the opposite direction: a real democracy would have been (and still is) an extreme threat to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) which is an anti-democratic cadre party in the Leninist tradition, and has explicitly stated that it wants to remain one for all eternity. One of the narratives of justification that the CCP uses is that Chinese people neither want nor need democracy.

A democratic HK would squarely falsify this claim.

Indeed, I'd argue that the single most urgent reason (but not the only one) for China 's bullying of Taiwan is precisely this, Taiwan is a thriving democratic and Chinese society.

The PRC kept them from doing that.

Chris Patten tried to introduce democracy in 1992, with less than 5 years to go before the agreed handover, and that angered Beijing yes. And then, when the handover happened, Beijing reversed Patten's reforms.

But if the UK had done the same thing in 1980 or 1970 or 1960 or 1950? I don't think the PRC could have done anything about it.

The UK never really cared about Hong Kong democracy. If they had, they would have implemented democratic reforms decades ago, instead of leaving it until the very last minute.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the British (colonial historically and more recently) have always seemed to find democracy a bit... inconvenient.

Both for their colonies and for themselves.

China did not control the island before the refugees from China took it over. Japan controlled the island. However, after the war Japan did hand control over the island to China however China never did get to control it after the war or before.

This is correct. Taiwan was part of Japan before the war.

When it comes to China, it's best to think of dealing with governments than land mass. Both Chinese governments claim the entirety of the Chinese land mass. Trump's tariffs are levied against the government People's Republic of China. Taiwan's government is Republic of China, which is not a target of the tariffs.

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