War on the Rocks · Oct 13, 2026

How Taiwan Activates Beijing’s Chosen Fear

The standard explanations for why Taiwan is so important to the Chinese Communist Party are familiar: territorial integrity, credibility of deterrence commitments, great power competition with the United States, the strategic value of the first island chain, and the semiconductor industry concentrated in TSMC’s fabrication facilities. These explanations work, but they don’t tell the whole story.