Between typhoons and the Chinese threat, Taiwan critical area geopolitics

Abstract

Borrowing the concept of the Critical Zone from the earth sciences, Bruno Latour proposes going
beyond the geopolitics of the Westphalian regime, a framework he considers obsolete for dealing
with the crises of the Anthropocene. In this article, I follow on Latour’s initiative to look at the
case of Taiwan as a particularly critical area of the global crisis, based on two field studies, as well
as quantitative surveys. However, in the context of Taiwan, the classical type of geopolitical risk
cannot be neglected, given the Chinese threat. Disasters caused by global warming, such as typhoons
and landslides, are generally considered separately from geostrategic risks like economic blockades or a military invasion. In the first part, I follow—in the company of Bruno Latour himself—an
international team of geologists in the Taroko Valley, where an Asia Cement mine threatens an
aboriginal village. I then go to the Dongsha Atoll in the South China Sea, where Taiwanese military
personnel help marine biologists collecting plastic waste from all over Asia, while Chinese boats
roam the area. Finally, the last part presents opinion surveys dealing, on the one hand, with the
ecological risk, on the other, the menace of a Chinese armed invasion. In conclusion, we propose an
approach to geopolitics that takes into account both the ecological crisis and the geostrategic threat.