The Taiwan Story

How a Small Island Will Dictate the Global Future

By: Kerry Brown

Narrated by: Kerry Brown

Brought to you by Penguin.

An urgent, indispensable guide to why Taiwan matters – for China, the West and everyone’s future

When the bloody Chinese Civil War concluded in 1949, two Chinas were born. Mao’s Communists won and took China’s mainland; Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to Taiwan island. Since then, China and Taiwan have drifted into being separate political and cultural entities.

Taiwan is now a flourishing democracy and an economic success story: just one of its companies produces over 90 per cent of the semiconductors that power the world’s economy. It is a free and vibrant society. For the United States and the West, the island is a bastion of freedom against China’s assertive presence in the region. And yet China, increasingly bellicose under Xi Jinping, insists Taiwan is part of its territory and must be returned to it. Should China blockade the island and mount an invasion, it would set off a chain reaction that would pitch it against the US – escalating a regional war into a global one. Taiwan is thus a geopolitical powder keg.

The Taiwan Story helps us understand how and why we’ve arrived at this dangerous moment in history. With unparalleled access to Taiwan’s political leaders and a deep understanding of the island’s history and culture, Professor Kerry Brown provides an updated reading of Taiwan, its twenty-three million people, and how they navigate being caught in this frightening geopolitical standoff. This is the essential book delving into Taiwan’s unique story, buried beneath the headlines, told in an accessible, expert and urgent way.

‘Kerry Brown is one of our most perceptive and accurate foreign observers of China’ JOHN SIMPSON
‘Thorough and nuanced’ MICHAEL BOOTH
‘Compelling’ ELLIOT ACKERMAN
‘Factual, thoughtful and very well-written’ SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND

©2024 Kerry Brown (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

'Kerry Brown has produced an authoritative primer to all things Taiwan – in eminently readable prose he tells how an island once dismissed by the Qing dynasty emperor Kangxi as a “mud ball in the sea” was transformed into a raucous democracy and economic powerhouse, as well as one of the most contested lands in the world. Brown covers how it started, how it’s going and above all, why it is urgent that we all care' (Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy)