With the People’s Republic of China more assertive, it must be prudent to fear that Taiwan is more exposed.

The PRC claims ownership of Taiwan and its stated policy is “reunification” with the motherland. This is part of what the regime sees as its “territorial integrity” and there can be little doubt that “reunification” is a serious intention. Until now, Beijing has let the issue rest, but for how long?

Under Xi Jinping, the regime has been transformed. He inherited a state guided by economic pragmatism. It is now a state dedicated to national greatness. That determination is visible in China’s foreign policy, such as in the Belt and Road Initiative (the building of a global structure of power with China in the center) and in Beijing’s “influence policy” in Europe, America and elsewhere.

It is visible above all in the region. Beijing has de facto turned 3 million of the South China Sea’s 3.5 million square kilometers into its own territorial waters, in contravention of international law and a ruling of the Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, and is building bases, some of them military, in other countries’ waters. It has unilaterally established an “air defense zone” over the territory between Taiwan and Japan. It is exploring the establishment of a military base on Vanuatu, off Australia’s east coast. Australia and New Zealand are on the forefront of China’s purchase of influence abroad, in persistent interference in politics, media and universities, described in a recent Australian book as a “silent invasion.”

Beijing’s attitude to democratic values is also visible in the region. It is undermining the rule of law in Hong Kong. It the matter of Taiwan’s “reunification,” the will of the people of a democratic country is to count for nothing.

Beijing claims that Taiwan is historically a part of China, but that is bogus history. The Qing Dynasty declared Taiwan to be annexed in the 17the Century, but this was a pure case of colonization, and mainland China was anyway never in control of the territory. Only in 1887 was Taiwan formalized as a province, before being ceded to Japan in 1895. The four years from 1945 to 1949, following the defeat of Japan in WWII, is the only period in which Taiwan has properly been governed as a part of China.

Taiwan has governed itself since 1949. During that period, it has metamorphosed from a land of mass poverty to a modern and affluent economy, with a standard of living now much ahead of mainland China’s. It has performed the miracle of transitioning peacefully from authoritarianism to a well functioning democracy.

The PRC has emerged from the Party Congress of October 2017 and the People’s Congress of March 2018 (the legislature) as a regime of consolidated totalitarianism. The leader, Xi Jinping, has had himself elevated to a pedestal of one-man rule, complete with undisguised person cult, previously occupied only by Mao. The apparatus of the party-state has been remolded into one of straight-line party command.

The regime is more confident and powerful than ever, and again under the command of a single supremo. It is guided by an ideology of nationalism, under the banner of Xi’s “China Dream.”

Democracies are exposed to two kinds of danger, they can erode from within or they can be crushed from outside. The first danger has recently done its work in for example Russia, Turkey and Venezuela. The second danger has not been at work since the imposition of Soviet regimes in Central Europe following WWII. Taiwan is today the one democracy in the world seriously exposed to the danger of being crushed by a totalitarian state. That danger is greater today than it was half a year ago.