By Eryk Bagshaw and Daniel Ceng
Taipei: Taiwanese chip billionaire Robert Tsao has warned the democratic island must prepare its defences for an attack by China after the pro-sovereignty Democratic Progressive Party won a third straight election on the weekend.
Beijing has maintained a relatively restrained response to the result but scored a significant diplomatic win on Monday after Nauru, one of the handful of countries to recognise Taiwan, severed its diplomatic ties with the island and said it was an “inalienable part of China’s territory”.
Tsao said he expected pressure from Beijing to increase further following the DPP victory and that Taiwan must get its military and civilian defences in order to maintain the island’s sovereignty.
“If they get crazy, then we have to be prepared,” Tsao said in an interview with this masthead at his home in central Taipei. “Nobody expected Hamas could take such a violent action against civilians around the Gaza Strip.”
Taiwanese billionaire Robert Tsao at his home in Taipei on Sunday. Credit: Daniel Ceng
Tsao, who founded semiconductor giant United Microelectronics Corporation [UMC] in 1980, has invested $US100 million ($150 million) in Taiwanese “civilian warriors” to prepare for war including training in first aid and sheltering from airstrikes.
“It makes them much more comfortable and also makes them less vulnerable to any kind of threat,” he said.
The outspoken critic of Beijing is a divisive figure in Taiwan where he has clashed with supporters of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), which favours closer economic ties with China.
The KMT lost Saturday’s presidential election after recording 4.67 million votes to the DPP’s 5.58 million votes. The Taiwan People’s Party, which also favoured more engagement with Beijing, won 3.69 million votes.
Taiwan’s pro-democracy party celebrates its victory in the country’s elections over the weekend.Credit: Daniel Ceng
“It was a relief,” Tsao said. “For the last 24 years, China has mobilised all their efforts, but they failed. It shows we are not afraid of the major Chinese campaign to frighten Taiwanese.”
The DPP’s Lai Ching-te will succeed President Tsai Ing-wen after his inauguration in May. The 64-year-old has been Tsai’s vice president since 2020 and has helped oversee Taiwanese resistance to growing campaigns of economic and diplomatic coercion by Beijing. None of the major parties in this year’s election supported unifying with the mainland, a position which is backed by less than 10 per cent of the Taiwanese population.
The Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan but claims the island of 24 million as its own. Taiwan was governed by its rival the KMT after it retreated to the island at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
China’s leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly threatened the island with military incursions and described unification as inevitable. Taiwan’s defence ministry said four Chinese naval vessels were detected around Taiwan’s identification zone on Sunday, down from eight warplanes and six ships on Saturday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has long had a policy of reunification. Credit: AP
To manage the disparity between China’s overwhelming military power while maintaining self-governance, Taiwan’s leaders and the international community have kept the “status quo” for decades. The system allows Taiwan to have self-determination without declaring formal international independence.
Tsao said Taiwan needed to prepare its military, so it could move towards declaring formal independence, a move that is likely to trigger a response from Beijing and escalate the threat of superpower conflict between China and the United States.
“I think we should go for total independence to completely get rid of the threat,” Tsao said. “After World War Two, there were only 60 sovereign states in the world. Now there are 195. It’s a trend of modern civilisation.”
Tsao said that he believed the US and its allies would support Taiwanese independence because the Taiwan Strait is vital to world trade. Up to 50 per cent of global cargo passes through the 125-kilometre-wide channel between Taiwan and China. The island is also a strategic flashpoint, both for its critical semiconductor industry and for its access to the Pacific Ocean on its east coast.
US President Joe Biden made clear this week that Washington does not support Taiwanese independence in comments aimed at moderating Beijing’s response to the vote and pro-independence sentiment in Taiwan, a position which is also not officially supported by any of the major parties.
An unofficial US delegation including former national security advisor Stephen Hadley arrived in Taiwan on Sunday to meet with outgoing President Tsai to express their “support for Taiwan’s continued prosperity and growth”. China’s Foreign Ministry said the visit from Washington officials sent the “wrong signals to Taiwan independence separatist forces”.
But the low-ranking visit highlights the ongoing challenge for international governments: engaging with Taiwan, the world’s 21st largest economy, without creating official diplomatic ties and endangering the status quo.
Until Monday, Nauru was one of only thirteen countries that recognised Taiwan’s government. China has whittled down the number of countries that have diplomatic relations with Taipei over decades through promises of economic co-operation from the world’s second-largest economy.
Nauru’s government said in a statement Monday that it “will sever ‘diplomatic relations’ with Taiwan as of this day and no longer develop any official relations or official exchanges with Taiwan.”
That leaves Taiwan with only a dozen official diplomatic partners including Palau, Tuvalu and Belize.
Tsao said despite Australia not recognising Taiwan as a national government and the risk of blowback from Beijing it was time for Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong to visit Taiwan.
“Taiwan needs the world recognition,” he said. “Developing a long-term relationship with Taiwan will bring good benefits to Australia. You don’t expect to gain things anything working with China. They don’t honour current world values, norms or rules.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Senator Wong said the Australian government wished the people of Taiwan well.
“Peace and stability is in all our interests,” the spokesperson said. “Australia does not want to see any unilateral change to the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.”
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