Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left podcast.

Today we explore how Taiwan's own people are stuck between the U.S. and China.

Fewer and fewer of them want to rejoin China, but their faith in America is sinking just as fast as Trump treats them as a bargaining chip.

Their own leaders are split on how to respond, and the place that

makes most of the world's advanced chips has almost no seat at the table where its future is being

decided. For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top takes in about 50 minutes

today include DW News, Vox, the China and Africa podcast, Paul Krugman, Johnny Harris, and Maxonomics. Then in the

additional deeper dives half of the show, there will be more in five sections. Section A,

the making of Taiwan, section B, the multipolar worldview, section C, Taiwan in the crosshairs,

section D, the summit and its fall Fallout, and Section E, the Resource

War and Africa. And now, on to the show.

One of the things that China always highlights is that we're seeing changes unseen in a century. So there's

clearly a big shift in world order and China sees it as necessary to shape the new world order

that is emerging. Now, how much of that is actual form and pictures and images and how China

projects itself and how much of that is substance is a different question,

just like how much responsibility China actually wants to take to run a world order that is

complex, that requires responsibility. That's another open question. And overall, China does not

want to have the responsibility. It wants to look good.

It wants to have more power, especially vis-à-vis the United States, which is kind of the only peer-grade power that China aspires to catch up with and overtake.

But it doesn't necessarily want to come with all the responsibilities that come with actually sitting on top

of a world order that you've shaped.

Yeah.

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