With a record number of Chinese fighters flying sorties in Taiwan’s air defence zone in October, and rhetoric on all sides becoming more heated, many observers say the past few weeks have been the most tense in the region for decades. How serious is the prospect of an attempt by Beijing to take back the island that it has claimed since 1949 – and would an attack draw the US into a major international conflict?
For much of the past two years, as Covid-19 has spread across the world, Taiwan has seemed like an oasis – successfully keeping the virus under control and continuing with life more or less as normal.
But at the same time, just as they have for decades, the island’s residents have lived in the shadow of a threat from China, which claims sovereignty and says it has the right to seize control. In recent months, with China’s president, Xi Jinping, repeatedly proclaiming that his “unification” policy “must be fulfilled”, fighter jets and bombers have stepped up sorties into Taiwanese airspace.
