
The Struggle for Taiwan
A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between
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Narrated by:
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Austin Yang
About this listen
A concise, definitive history of the precarious relationship among the US, China, and Taiwan
As tensions over Taiwan escalate, the United States and China stand on the brink of a catastrophic war. Resolving the impasse demands we understand how it began. In 1943, the Allies declared that Japanese-held Taiwan would return to China at the conclusion of World War II. The Chinese civil war led to a change of plans. The Communist Party came to power in China and the defeated Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan, where he was afforded US protection. The specter of conflict has loomed ever since.
In The Struggle for Taiwan, Sulmaan Wasif Khan offers the first comprehensive history of the triangular relationship between the United States, China, and Taiwan, exploring America’s ambivalent commitment to Taiwan’s defense, China’s bitterness about the separation, and Taiwan’s impressive transformation into a flourishing democracy. War is not inevitable, Khan shows, but to avoid it, decision-makers must heed the lessons of the past.
From the White Terror to the Taiwan Straits Crises, from the normalization of Sino-American relations to Trump-era rising tensions, The Struggle for Taiwan charts the paths to our present predicament to show what futures might be possible.
©2024 Sulmaan Wasif Khan (P)2024 Basic BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Khan recounts Taiwan’s story in a way that shows the importance of understanding the context of the conflict.”—Kirkus
“In its depth of research, its command of the field, and its assured, fast-moving pace, The Struggle for Taiwan is an extraordinary book.”—Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
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Taiwan - The Israel of the East
- How the US, China, and Japan Influenced the Forming of a New Nation
- By: Luke Diep-Nguyen
- Narrated by: Tristin Thomas
- Length: 2 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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On October 25, 1947, the United States government helped the Chinese Nationalist Party, Kuomingtang (KMT) President Chiang Kai-Shek flee the overwhelming communist forces. President Chiang established the new democratic government known as the Republic of China on an island later to be known as Taiwan, previously a major trading center called the “the beautiful isle” or Formosa. This audiobook will not only account for the transformation of Taiwan in the eyes of the colonizers but understand the detrimental impact that the reshaping caused.
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Formosa = The Beautiful Island
- By QuantumNorth on 06-16-23
By: Luke Diep-Nguyen
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White Sun War
- The Campaign for Taiwan
- By: Mick Ryan
- Narrated by: Joshua Saxon
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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After decades of poising on the brink, the United States and China finally go to war when China invades the island of Taiwan. Deploying their most futuristic technologies in this grand strategic competition of the twenty-first century, the stakes could not be higher. Not only the future of the Taiwanese people but the fate of the world lies in the balance. In an era when humans no longer just use machines, but partner with them in all aspects of military operations, this fictional account views this future war through the eyes of the American, Chinese, and Taiwanese caught up in the maelstrom.
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Like a Clancy Novel w/50% of the Research
- By Mike on 06-22-24
By: Mick Ryan
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Imperial Twilight
- The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age
- By: Stephen R. Platt
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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As one of the most potent turning points in the country's modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today's China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to "open" China even as China's imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country's decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China's advantage.
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Balanced readable narrative about the Opium Wars
- By Carl A. Gallozzi on 09-05-18
By: Stephen R. Platt
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The Political Thought of Xi Jinping
- By: Steve Tsang, Olivia Cheung
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lam
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of the last half dozen years, China's supreme leader Xi Jinping has made extraordinary changes which have profound implications not only for the Chinese people but nations throughout the world. Given how swiftly and fundamentally China's relations with the rest of the world are changing under Xi's rule, it is imperative that we know what Xi Jinping Thought is, how it evolved, and why it is so important.
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An excellent work, well written and superbly read
- By MM@CC on 06-02-24
By: Steve Tsang, and others
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New Cold Wars
- China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West
- By: David E. Sanger, Mary K. Brooks
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, David E. Sanger
- Length: 18 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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For years, the United States was confident that the newly democratic Russia and increasingly wealthy China could be lured into a Western-led order that promised prosperity and relative peace—so long as they agreed to Washington’s terms. By the time America emerged from the age of terrorism, it was clear that this had been a fantasy.
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Gives many insights into our new Cold Wars
- By Amazon Customer on 04-19-24
By: David E. Sanger, and others
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China's World View
- Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict
- By: David Daokui Li
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Writing in response to the growing anti-Chinese sentiment and alarmed by the threat of war, Dr. David Daokui Li pulls from his wealth of firsthand experience to demystify contemporary Chinese society and advocate for understanding between China and the West. In this urgently needed and fascinating book, he explains the inner workings of a rising superpower to help the world understand how it works-and how to work with it.
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The spirit of this book is critically important.
- By Mike Turner on 06-21-24
By: David Daokui Li
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The Lumumba Plot
- The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
- By: Stuart A. Reid
- Narrated by: Michael Boatman
- Length: 18 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. At the helm as prime minister was charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba. Just days after the handover, however, the Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo crisis.”
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Somewhere between a bio and a hatchet job
- By Buretto on 12-27-23
By: Stuart A. Reid
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The Assault on the State
- How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future
- By: Stephen E. Hanson, Jeffrey S. Kopstein
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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What if the state as we know it didn't exist? Our air would be poisonous, our votes uncounted, and our markets dysfunctional. Yet across the world, in countries as diverse as Hungary, Israel, the UK, and the US, attacks on the modern state and its workforce are intensifying. They are morphing into power grabs by self-aggrandizing politicians who attempt to seize control of the state for themselves and their cronies. What replaces the modern state once it is fatally undermined is not the free market and the flowering of personal liberty.
By: Stephen E. Hanson, and others
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The Hundred-Year Marathon
- China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower
- By: Michael Pillsbury
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the US government's leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country's rise - and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us as the world's leading superpower.
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Fascinating perspective.
- By Rocky Mackintosh on 01-05-17
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Paper Soldiers
- How the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order
- By: Saleha Mohsin
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1995, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin re-defined the next thirty years of currency policy that ushered in exceptional prosperity and cheap foreign goods, but the strong dollar policy also played a role in the devastating hollowing out of America’s manufacturing sector. Meanwhile, abroad, the United States increasingly turned to the dollar as a weapon of war. In Paper Soldiers, Saleha Mohsin reveals how the Treasury Department has shaped U.S. policy at home and overseas by wielding the American dollar as a weapon—and what that means in a new age of crisis.
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A must read
- By John K on 10-09-24
By: Saleha Mohsin
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The Strategy of Denial
- American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict
- By: Elbridge A. Colby
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Elbridge A. Colby was the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the most significant revision of US defense strategy in a generation. Here he lays out how America's defense must change to address China's growing power and ambition. Based firmly in the realist tradition but deeply engaged in current policy, this book offers a clear framework for what America's goals in confronting China must be, how its military strategy must change, and how it must prioritize these goals over its lesser interests.
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The Strategy of the Warring States Period for 2030
- By Kenneth on 03-17-25
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The Achilles Trap
- Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq
- By: Steve Coll
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 17 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, its message was clear: Iraq, under the control of strongman Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction that, if left unchecked, posed grave danger to the world. But when no WMDs were found, the United States and its allies were forced to examine the political and intelligence failures that had led to the invasion and the occupation, and the civil war that followed. One integral question has remained unsolved.
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From the Saddam’s Point of View.
- By philip on 03-08-24
By: Steve Coll
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House of Huawei
- The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company
- By: Eva Dou
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world’s most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing. This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the US-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the global spotlight.
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Good description of how China understood the critical importance of telecom technology before other countries in the west
- By Juan C. Rodriguez on 02-19-25
By: Eva Dou
What listeners say about The Struggle for Taiwan
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- WLC
- 06-12-24
Historic Basis of Taiwan as a Tinder Box for War
Excellent history of US-China-Taiwan relations and internal politics from 1943 to the present that have evolved to the current US Strategic Ambiguity policy and to Taiwan being a possible tinder box that could ignite war between China and the US. The confusing and often contradictory record of US interactions with China and Taiwan and Chinese growth in power have evolved to the current tense state of relations. China’s perceived red lines in US-Taiwan interactions and in the possibility of Taiwan declaring itself an independent country have a long history that need to be considered carefully as the US and China continue their economic, strategic and military competition.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-10-24
One Perspective
I found value in this audiobook. There are more things unsaid than said, but isn't that always the case? I felt the performance was passable.
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- Steve Tone
- 07-09-24
The Struggle For Taiwan
In his book "The Struggle for Taiwan: A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between," Khan meticulously traces the events that shaped Taiwan's trajectory, from the Chinese Civil War to its present-day status as a thriving democracy. In the past, the U.S. supported Taiwan and its brutal dictator to counter Communist expansion. Now, Taiwan is a flourishing democracy that makes 90 percent of the most advanced computer chips in the world. With its timely exploration of the complex relationship between Taiwan, China, and the United States, the book sheds light on the historical roots of the current tensions. This interests anyone desiring an understanding of one of the key potential flashpoints in the world today.
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- John
- 08-18-24
Good history, limited analysis
Thorough and balanced history that hopefully examines the three corners of the relationship.. Reference to Colby”s Strategy of Denial would have significantly strengthened the strategic analysis. Worthwhile read.
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