- [Johnny] In the summer of 1995, China sent a bunch

of its troops to the province of Fujian.

They then started testing missiles and putting it on TV.

They then started running highly publicized combat

exercises, very similar to what it would look like

to cross this 130 kilometer wide straight

to invade the island of Taiwan.

A place that China doesn't think is a real country

but rather a part of China itself

a rebellious island province in an unfinished civil war.

- Another round of Chinese war games

near Taiwan has the us and other concerned.

- [Johnny] China did all this saber rattling

because Taiwan's president had asked

for a visa to visit the United States

and the US Congress voted to give it to him

defined Beijing and undermining China's claim to Taiwan.

Oh, and Taiwan was holding their first democratic election.

- [Reporter] These are the first free elections

of a Chinese leader in 5,000.

- [Reporter] China announced Friday

that it would start the new military exercises

less than a week before Taiwan's presidential election.

- [Narrator] China hated that all of this was happening

on this island that they think is theirs.

Hence all of the military flexing,

but look who shows up next.

- Diplomatic trouble may be brewing again

between China and the United States.

(dramatic music)

- It's the US military.

And they're sending their biggest show

of military force in Asia

since the Vietnam war right here in China's neighborhood.

President Bill Clinton sent in all of the US's best stuff.

Aircraft carriers, guided missile cruisers, destroyers,

powerful weapon systems

from the most powerful military on earth.

So all of this concentrated US military power

comes into the region

and enters right here through the straight of Taiwan.

It was a response to China

and all of its efforts to intimidate Taiwan.

The message was very clear.

"China, we are way more powerful than you.

So back off and let Taiwan do its thing."

And guess what?

It totally worked.

China backed down and the US reasserted itself

as the global powerhouse, a power that no one can mess with.

Okay. So now let's fast forward to last fall.

A lot has changed in this 20 or so years

and China is at it again, flexing on Taiwan.

Their favorite way of doing this lately

is flying military aircraft into this air border

Taiwan's air defense identification zone or ADIZ,

and ADIZ is airspace that if you enter

you should identify yourself

or else the nearby country will assume

that you're coming to attack them.

China has started flying military aircraft

over this airspace

without asking permission, without identifying themselves.

Not just like once or twice

but like dozens of times per day, hundreds of times a month

these are the actual recorded flight paths

of Chinese aircraft flying over Taiwan's ADIZ.

And then back to China, it's a giant F.U.

to Taiwan or rather remember whose boss here.

Luckily there's some really amazing data

on every single one of these Chinese flyovers.

They're all documented.

- [Reporter] Taiwan's air force scrambled again today.

- This is research

from the Foreign Policy Research Institute

and it's incredibly useful to see China's activity

in Taiwan's ADIZ.

You can see this massive surge late last year in flyovers.

This is a graph that shows every single time

a Chinese jet has flown over Taiwan's ADIZ in 2021.

You can see that it comes

to a peak in the first week of October.

This was the week that China was celebrating its founding

and they were sending a very clear message to Taiwan.

You will be ours.

That week, this Chinese state owned publication comes out

with this headline: Time to warn Taiwan secessionists

and their fomenters: war is real.

This is not fair play.

So guess who shows up to the region to calm things down?

- A US war shit has sailed through the Taiwan Straight.

(upbeat electronic music)

- So right after this huge bulk of flyovers

of Taiwan's aides, the US sends in guided missile destroyers

through the Taiwan Straight.

And there are accompanied by a Canadian show.

- One of 25 Chinese aircraft that entered its defense zone.

- Oh, but this time it didn't work.

Here's when the US sailed through the Straight.

And here's what China does after.

Tons more flyovers of Taiwan's ADIZ.

Looking at the raw data,

you can see that these flyovers start happening

almost every day.

(upbeat synth music)

It's not the 90s anymore.

Things have changed.

Bill Clinton can't just send a bunch of Naval ships

to the Taiwan Straight and expect China to back down.

We're living in a different era.

The biggest difference is that

China's military has become way more powerful

in the last 20 years.

Add to that, that there's zeal

for taking over Taiwan to reunite it with mainland China

has grown immensely every year since.

The reason I'm telling you this story

and showing you the difference between how China reacted

in the 90s and how it reacted last fall

is because that difference is really important

if we want to think about

what war looks like in this region.

I've been talking to military experts.

I've been diving deep into military reports

and writings from the Chinese military itself

to try to understand what war with Taiwan would look like.

It's something that is becoming more likely year by year.

So what's to follow is my best attempt

at understanding what war in the Taiwan Straight looks like

a war that drags in the United States and its allies.

War is impossible to predict, and so we don't know for sure

but what I hope we can do here is look at a scenario

and learn how conflict works and what calculations

all the countries involved would have to make

in what might become the next world war.

- I just wanna make China understand

that we are not gonna step back.

- China's aggression against Taiwan is accelerating

and it's blaming the US.

- [Reporter] Beijing has been getting

increasingly tough on Taiwan.

- [Reporter] So you are saying

that the United States would come to Taiwan's defense?

(dramatic music)

- Yes. And yes.

- Hey, before we dive into this

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And now let's dive into the scenario

about potential war between Taiwan and China.

(cheeky music)

Okay, I'm gonna dive into a very specific scenario

of how conflict could escalate in the Taiwan Straight.

But first I have to say something.

I have to get this off my chest

which is I've felt a little bit conflicted

making this video.

I feel very against the sort of machismo fascination

with conflict, like it's some sort of cool, good thing.

When at the end of the day

what we're talking about are people's lives.

We are talking about valuable taxpayer money.

We are talking about the future

of entire societies being ripped apart by a power struggle.

This is not sexy and cool.

This is a nightmare.

Secondly, let us all just acknowledge right now

how easy it is to dehumanize China

and its leaders and its military.

But let me just remind you that China doesn't want war.

They don't want bloodshed.

They will probably try much less violent ways

to try to force Taiwan to the negotiating table

before resorting to all out invasion.

But the reason I want to make a video

about the nightmare scenario, because even

if a military has a goal

for a less violent intervention, that's not how war works.

Conflict is very messy and one miscalculation can lead

to an escalation in the conflict.

And now you have a wildfire that is

out of control on both sides.

It's incredibly easy for the momentum

of conflict to bring us into that kind of situation.

And that's why I wanna suss out what it could look like.

Okay. Those are my of disclaimers.

Let's dive into this.

(dramatic music)

I'm gonna start rolling here.

I'm two.

Okay. I'm gonna clap here comes.

Okay, I need to bring you over

to my desk to show you some documents I've been staring at.

Any invasion of Taiwan starts with this document.

This is a Chinese law meant to stop any parts of China

from succeeding from China itself.

And it mentions Taiwan.

It basically says that if Taiwan tries to assert

its independence from China or, and this is the most

important part, or if the possibilities

for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted

that China shall employ non peaceful means

and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty

and territorial integrity.

Translation, if they run out of diplomatic solutions,

China is required by law to invade Taiwan

and force it to reunite with China

and know I don't read or speak Mandarin

but Google translate, come on.

Listen, we're like 70 years into peaceful solutions

being tried and not working.

Meanwhile, on the island of Taiwan support for any sort

of reunification is at an all time low.

Like it's not looking like peaceful reunification

is gonna happen,

which is making the interpretation of this law

more and more on the side of China should do this forcibly.

Okay, so that's the legal justification

from a Chinese perspective,