US China Tensions Over Taiwan: A Complex Web of Sovereignty, Trade, and Military Might The People's Republic of China's increasingly aggressive posture towards Taiwan has set off alarm bells in Washington, prompting a range of diplomatic and economic countermeasures from the United States.
At its core, this crisis is about sovereignty – or rather, the lack thereof. China considers Taiwan a wayward province that must eventually be reunited under the Chinese Communist Party's rule.
The United States, on the other hand, has long regarded Taiwan as a de facto independent state, bound to it by a web of diplomatic and economic ties.