Taiwan Story: How a Small Island Will Dictate the Global Future

In this urgent book, we learn why a small island in the East China Sea will be central to the world’s future

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 a new 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.

Review: A compelling look at the small island caught between Chinese power and the vagaries of US politics . . . As Brown shows so compellingly, anyone who thinks the Taiwan problem can be easily solved probably hasn’t thought about it for long enough — Bill Emmott * Financial Times *
An erudite primer . . . Brown’s mission to educate westerners about Taiwan and why it matters is a critical one, which makes this book well worth reading — Josh Glancy * Sunday Times *
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
A passionate defence of the \”unglamorous\” and vague diplomatic fudge that, for half a century, characterised the uncomfortable triangular relationship between China, Taiwan and American. It’s precisely this ambiguity, Brown argues, that has kept the peace until now . . . Invaluable — Cindy Yu * Daily Telegraph *
Kerry Brown is one of our most perceptive and accurate foreign observers of China — John Simpson
Brown reveals Taiwan to his readers as a place of fascinating pluralism . . . a clear-sighted assessment of international trade-offs that govern its people’s fate — Christopher Harding * Spectator *

Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Imprint: Viking Penguin
Publication date: 11/02/2025