Paul Huang, the real situation in Taiwan: politics, military, China — #40

Paul Huang is a journalist and research fellow with the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation. He is currently based in Taipei, Taiwan.

Sample articles:

Taiwan’s Military Has Flashy American Weapons but No Ammo (in Foreign Policy): https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/20/taiwan-military-flashy-american-weapons-no-ammo/

Taiwan’s Military Is a Hollow Shell (Foreign Policy): https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/15/china-threat-invasion-conscription-taiwans-military-is-a-hollow-shell/

Steve and Paul discuss: 

0:00 Introduction 

1:44 Paul’s background; the Green Party (DPP) and Blue Party (KMT) in Taiwan

4:40 How the Taiwanese people view themselves vs mainland Chinese

15:02 Taiwan taboos: politics and military preparedness

15:27 Effect of Ukraine conflict on Taiwanese opinion

29:56 Lack of realistic military planning

37:20 Is there a political solution to reunification with China? What influence does the U.S. have?

51:34 The likelihood of peaceful reunification of Taiwan and China

56:45 Honest views on Taiwanese and U.S. military readiness for a

conflict with China

Music used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure.

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Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU.

Please send any questions or suggestions to [email protected] or Steve on Twitter @hsu_steve.