By Venus Upadhayaya

Between Expansion, Pushback, Bipolar and Multipolar Worlds Taiwan Strait is Today’s World’s Dystopia By Venus UpadhayayaThere’s a camouflage about Taiwan or probably Taiwan is a camouflage for much–the question today is if it’s led by China or if it’s led by America and how this bipolar equation called ‘tensions in the Taiwan strait’ is geopolitically metamorphosing into the narratives of the multipolar world.

Taiwan’s western coast is beautiful and as you descend further through Kenting, the coast with beautiful beaches is a delight but somewhere hidden and off sight are tensions. This abnormality hidden within the normal is probably how espionage works and advances. The question obviously is how decimal are linear narratives in their depiction of Taiwan’s situation today. Likely the narratives are a part of either the espionage operations or the larger covert warfare.

In today’s Taiwan Strait, there’s a whole world beset with riddles and rifts, some unresolved since the inception of PRC and ROC and some as latest as the built-up further ahead in the South China Sea. The very obvious but unlooked question is if China’s built-up in the South China Sea is an answer to its containment through the first chain of islands including Taiwan?

Is Taiwan geographically but geopolitically a big containment for China’s expansionist agendas which means a direct threat to PRC’s mid-century goals and its aspiration to be a global superpower? Thus as China’s power expands, its choke point around Taiwan would obviously keep calling for more aggressive pull back from the PRC because Taiwan in itself is a containment for all that PRC believes itself to be.

Taiwanese would strongly deny being a chokepoint for the PRC but the truth remains that Taiwanese identity is delicately saddled in the maneuvering space between US and China. The same political dynamics manifests within its domestic political circles as well where DPP, the ruling party at the federal level historically and operationally aligns with the US and West while Taiwan’s first political party, KMT which fought tooth and nail with the CCP in the civil war now adopts a pro-unification and pro-Russia policy. Dig deeper and within this little island space of Taiwan housing just 23 million people, there’s a political presence of every big and small global power.

Thus as the world advances towards the mid-century and Chinese military maneuvers annually increase in strength and intensity in the Taiwan strait as well as all around the island, as witnessed recently countries around and every part of the world impacted by the US-China rivalry will have its story to narrate on Taiwan. It’s to be seen how the Taiwanese maintain their political leverage amidst such intensifying tensions and complex alignments and it’s to be seen how multipolar world narratives emerge out of this equation.

Venus Upadhayaya is a senior journalist and a 2025 MOFA Taiwan Fellow.