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For more than 70 years, the Strait of Taiwanwhich they patrolled yesterday boats y chinese planes within the framework of military maneuvers to surround the islais an important maritime axis and source of international tensions.
Since the communists took power in China in 1949 and the nationalist government fled to Taiwan, The strait politically separates that island of 23 million inhabitants, governed by a democratic autonomous executive, of the People’s Republic of China.
At its narrowest point, Taiwan It is 130 km from the continent. But some smaller Taiwanese islands, such as Kinmen y Matsuare located a short distance from the chinese coasts.
More than 20% of international maritime trade passes through the strait. The value of this traffic represented about 2.45 trillion dollars in 2022, according to the American institute Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Besides, Taiwan It has a primary role in the production of semiconductors, crucial for the development of artificial intelligence, among other applications.
The island assures nothing less than the 90% of world supplies in that field. These two factors pose a significant risk for the entire world economy in the event of a blockade, according to several analysts.
“Markets would collapse, trade would contract, supply chains would become blocked and the global economy would go crazy,” he notes. Robert A. Manning, from the institute Stimson Center, in Washington.
The damage to companies using chips made in Taiwan could amount to $1.6 trillion a year, according to a study by Rhodium Group.
In 1954 a first crisis broke out when the nationalists of the Kuomintang (KMT) of Chiang Kai-shek They placed thousands of soldiers in Kinmen and Matsu, off the Chinese coast.
China responded with artillery fire against those islands. In the end, the crisis was defused.
Fighting resumed in 1958, when Mao Zedong’s forces bombed again Kinmen y Matsu.
The then US president, Dwight Eisenhower, ordered his army to escort the Taiwanese reinforcements. Unable to take those islands, Beijing announced a halt to the
fuego.
Since Tsai Ing-wen, candidate of the PProgressive Democratic Party (PDP), China has carried out many incursions with military aircraft into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ).
In 2022, Beijing carried out military exercises in response to a visit to Taiwan by the then president of the Camera of Representatives from US, Nancy Pelosi.