Why Taiwan’s Fate Is Tied To Ukraine’s

Will China allow a Russian defeat?

Alex Ates Haywood
6 min readJan 4, 2023
Photo by Jimmy Liao courtesy Pexels.com

More so than ever in the history of humanity, the story of global power politics in the remainder of the 21st century is going to be a story of diminishing resources and nations’ attempts to secure those resources.

The king of all resources is oil. The world consumes 36 billion barrels of it annually and yet every year there is less left in the ground.

No matter what the price of oil is on the open market, every year it “costs” more oil to get oil out of the ground, ship it, refine it, re-ship it, and burn it to do work or manufacture products as diverse as make-up or Halloween costumes with it.

And China, which manufactures most of the world’s Halloween costumes, imports 60% of the oil it uses, and 70% of that oil is shipped through the Malacca Straits.

China’s Malacca Straits (and Taiwan) dilemma

Source: Wikimedia Commons - Political Map of Southeast Asia

It is no secret the Chinese Communist Party does not agree with the American way of governance and resents the U.S.’s dominance of world affairs due to America’s economic and military strength.

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Alex Ates Haywood

After 20 years in finance I realized it was all a lie. Now I'm trying to figure out what 'it' is. Human being tired of being lied to.