Taiwan insists it is a self-governing country and has no desire to be kept under China’s thumb, while the oriental superpower’s authoritarian President Xi has refused to renounce the right to use force to wrest what he sees as a renegade province back under Chinese control. 

China has not held back in demonstrating its military ferocity, conducting a series of large-scale military exercises which have seen several of its jets encroach on Taiwanese air space and missiles plunge into the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan has responded to these perceived threats by ordering yet more defensive weaponry from America, leveraging its democracy and high-tech economy to strengthen foreign relations while revitalising its domestic arms production. 

And to top it off, Joe Biden has deviated from decades of deliberately ambiguous American rhetoric on the China-Taiwan problem by claiming the US would intervene militarily should Xi's armies attempt to seize the island by force.

But how did two territories with such close cultural ties become socio-political polar opposites? Are they really headed for war? And why is the United States even involved?

Let's wind the clock back a few decades to understand all this and more. 

TIMESTAMPS:

0.00: Introduction

2.07: Origins of China-Taiwan tensions

3.43: How Taiwan transformed from authoritarian province to flourishing democracy and technological powerhouse

7.49: Possibility of war between China and Taiwan

10.37: Shift in US foreign policy and involvement in China-Taiwan issue

14.47: Outro, questions for audience

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