Introduction

Last week, the US and Canada each sent a warship through the Taiwan Strait and Taiwan has appealed to the US for faster delivery of fighter aircraft. It's been a tense month in the Strait, kicked off by China's celebration of its national day on October 1 through flying a record number of aircraft through Taiwan's air defense identification zone. Could war really happen? Could China really successfully take Taiwan?

I speak to Oriana Skylar Mastro, fellow at Stanford and the American Enterprise Institute, whose detailed piece for Foreign Affairs took a close look at China's military options: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-06-03/china-taiwan-war-temptation.

To find out just why China cares about Taiwan so much, tune into a previous episode of Chinese Whispers where I spoke to Professor Rana Mitter and analyst Jessica Drun: https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/why-does-china-care-about-taiwan-.