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. Rational strategic calculation does not produce a posture in which a nuclear-armed state with the world’s second-largest economy treats a democratic island of 23 million people as a permanent, non-negotiable crisis. But what is rational depends largely on how history has defined you andThe post How Taiwan Activates Beijing’s Chosen Fear appeared first on War on the Rocks.