Tensions between the US and China are at their worst level in decades, and nowhere is this centered more than in the Taiwan Strait, where US arms sales are turning up Chinese rhetoric opposed to the idea of Taiwanese independence.
This is always a problem. If Taiwan were to try to assert independence, it would mean war. At the same time, China and Taiwan have not negotiated anything to resolve their respective status and coexistence, leaving things open.
This dangerously opens up the risk of war, and with the US having backed Taiwan so heavily, the instigating incident could easily be something Taiwan has no control over, even if they would bare the consequences.
At the same time, the US has been throwing around rhetoric about uniting the world against China, so this may just be China doing the same thing, and rhetoric going back and forth is meant by both sides to prove how serious they are, as opposed to being an actual policy.
Doesn’t the US understand the “Age of Humiliation” is over? China and their people will never go back to that. This is an extremely dangerous game the US is playing.
An inherently unstable situation was created as the best solution in the moment. It was accepted as temporary, until something better could be worked out. All parties involved had drastically different ideas of what that could be. Some parties had multiple and inconsistent ideas within their power structures.
Now the unstable has drifted into a long term, and everyone involved pushes at that unstable as if it were safe to do so. What has been there is taken as more stable than it really is, just because it has not failed yet.
It is like playing with a bottle of nitro, safe until it isn’t, and then people are very suddenly very badly hurt.
Some of those doing the playing are reckless, and others are irresponsible child-like undeserving of the power to harm others.
Nobody involved is looking very good just now.
There will be “shock” when the explosion toyed with suddenly happens.