I don’t envy American voters. Your presidential choices have an impact halfway across the planet. Your soldiers fight and die in other countries’ wars. I know you’re tired of feeling you have to fix the world’s problems. But like it or not, this unique privilege and responsibility comes with being a citizen of the greatest country in the world.
So spare a thought for one of these faraway places affected by your vote: my island home, Taiwan.
When I was growing up, we idolized America. I loved the idea of it — the land of opportunity and protector of democracy. I inherited this from my father, who was born in Taiwan in 1950, a year after the Chinese civil war forced his family to flee there from mainland China. He grew up in an era when, with the United States as a beacon, Taiwan transformed from dictatorship to democracy. After attending graduate school in Indiana in the 1980s, he returned a certified fanboy of Americana. We watched movies such as “Air Force One” and “Independence Day,” in which U.S. presidents used their fists to defeat America’s enemies and save the world. We ate at TGI Fridays in Taipei to satisfy his craving for a proper American hamburger. He dreamed that I’d someday make a life in America, where he felt that his opinionated only daughter would thrive.
Donald Trump’s return to office is putting our faith in America to the test. He has made clear that, unlike previous presidents, he couldn’t care less about Taiwan and our hard-won democracy. He says we need to pay for protection, even though we already spend billions of dollars a year on U.S. weapon systems. He says — falsely — that Taiwan “stole” America’s chip business, has dismissed us as a geopolitical trifle and expressed doubt about the U.S. being able to defend Taiwan against China.
Maybe this was just campaign bluster, but statements like this carry an existential weight for Taiwan’s 24 million residents. As China’s economic might has grown, we have been left with fewer and fewer allies in the world, relying on our informal but strong relationship with America for survival.
Are we on our own now? Mr. Trump makes me yearn for those action-hero commanders in chief that Dad and I rooted for.
Sure, we’re just a small island thousands of miles away across the Pacific. But from humble, war-torn beginnings, we blossomed into a bright spot for democracy and human rights in a part of the world where these things are in short supply. Before the “Made in China” label was slapped on the world’s products, there was “Made in Taiwan.” It was once shorthand for cheap plastic goods, but in my lifetime we’ve turned it into a badge of honor. Taiwan now produces 90 percent of the world’s most advanced semiconductors, the essential commodity of the digital age. We gave the world boba tea, cat cafes and Nymphia Wind, the first Asian winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” You’re welcome.
And if you voted for Mr. Trump out of a desire for border security, please understand that Taiwan is your most important line of defense in the Asia-Pacific. If China seized Taiwan, it would undermine the entire first island chain, a perimeter of U.S. allies stretching from Japan to Southeast Asia, not to mention extinguish a small but important democracy.
Border insecurity is a way of life in Taiwan: For the past 75 years, we’ve been hunkering down, looking across the Taiwan Strait as China got stronger and more threatening. During air-raid drills at school, we filed into an underground shelter where we crouched with our fingers covering our eyes and ears. I always wondered what good that would do if a bomb dropped on us. During one round of menacing Chinese missile launches in the mid-1990s when I was 10 years old, I asked my parents, “Will I be allowed to grow up?” I lived my whole life with this low-grade anxiety and these days avoid war movies because they feel like previews of Taiwan’s fate.
Today China sends its warplanes flying across the median line, the midway point of the strait, on a near-daily basis. Civilians shouldn’t have to know military terms like “median line,” but they are part of casual conversation in Taiwan. Just last month, after our democratically elected new president, Lai Ching-te, made some very measured remarks about Taiwan’s right to exist, China sent an armada of ships and aircraft to encircle and threaten us in a simulated military blockade.
In fact, Taiwan is already under attack, but for now, it’s mainly a war of words. Besides its constant military threats, China runs an insidious disinformation campaign against Taiwan, designed to erode our confidence and trust in America. And it’s working. More and more, there are those in Taiwan who say we are an “abandoned chess piece,” no longer valued by the United States. China amplifies these fears, hoping to convince us that we don’t stand a chance in a fight without U.S. help, so we shouldn’t fight at all. Our confidence and the power of deterrence are half the battle. Without those, anything can happen.
Still, we carry on, existing on the margins. We compete in the Olympics as Chinese Taipei. We tolerate drop-down menus on websites that refer to us as “Taiwan, province of China,” stripping us of sovereignty with those three little words. We lose ally after ally to Beijing’s bigger, better diplomatic aid packages. We don’t know what lies ahead with the unpredictable Mr. Trump. He considers himself a deal maker, so maybe he will strike some sort of bargain with us. But whatever Taiwan can offer him, Beijing can easily top.
So we prepare for that moment when we may have to defend ourselves. Like thousands of others, I’ve gone through civil defense training to learn things that most Americans wouldn’t imagine needing to know in their daily lives — how to tie a tourniquet, pack a go bag, evacuate to safer ground and remain alert to Chinese online disinformation. We do so gladly; it’s part of being a citizen of a democracy and defending it in any way that you can.
I know U.S. voters have a lot on their plates. I guess that’s why you voted for a president who promises to put America first. I get it; in some ways, Mr. Trump invokes the Hollywood presidents I grew up watching: bold, brash and rah-rah America. But I hope Americans are as committed to defending what their country really stands for — democracy — as we are in Taiwan.
My father died 10 years ago, before I was able to fulfill his American dream for me. But I finally did it this year and now spend much of my time in New York. I earned an O-1 visa, which is granted by the United States to “aliens of extraordinary ability” for the work I do as an interpreter. To get it, I had to prove I was of value to America. I wonder if my island home will have to do the same.
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