The Game Theory of the China/Taiwan Conflict
My selected article, [“China blockade would be act of war, Taiwan would not surrender”, Yimou Lee, Taiwan News, 2022.], details Taiwan’s plan to not surrender if China goes to war. Let’s explore why this is using the game theory we have learned in Networks 2040.
In recent years, international relations between China and Taiwan have grown tense and rampant with conflict. From the perspective of China, Taiwan is their territory after its control has been passed off from country to country throughout its tumultuous history. In the 17th century, the Quing dynasty gained control of Taiwan. After, in 1895, the Qing dynasty lost a war with the Japanese and relinquished ownership of Taiwan to Japan. China then took the island in 1945 after Japan lost WWII. Now here is where things get complicated; In 1949, the communists won and took control. China says that Taiwan is theirs because the communists took control of China. However, from the perspective of Taiwan, they are independent because they were not under the rule of the communist party, but those in control before.
The situation has escalated and each side is faced with two options. Either they can fight or back down/try a peaceful approach. This can perfectly be modeled using the payoff matrix from class and thought about using game theory.
We can see that China’s best response is to fight and Taiwan’s best response is to fight in hopes they can win. (This is an option for Taiwan as they have the support of the US). This is represented by an ongoing war [1,1], or one side winning [0,10], [10,0]. However, the optimal outcome for everyone is to solve things peacefully [10,10]. The payoff matrix shows the prisoner’s dilemma where the nash equilibrium is for each side to keep fighting, because if they stop there is a possibility that they could lose. Though they are better off with everyone solving things peacefully, this explains why are in our current, escalating situation.