Book talk: 'China's Strategic Culture and Relations Across the Taiwan Strait: a Perilous Triangle'

The Centre of Taiwan Studies is delighted to welcome Dr Neil Munro to give a book talk on the new volume China’s Strategic Culture and Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, examining what China’s strategic behaviour means for cross-Strait security and UK-Taiwan policy.

The book (Routledge, 2026) explores China’s strategic culture in the context of relations across the Taiwan Strait, focusing on four elements of strategic culture—interests, intentions, dependencies and behaviour. It closely examines how China’s interests in Taiwan have emerged from its identity as a modern, socialist nation-state, placing it on a collision course with Taiwan’s consolidated liberal democracy and the US vision of itself as a guarantor of global order. 

This book offers an interpretation of the intentions of China, Taiwan and the US, and analyses possible scenarios for conflict. Based on an analysis of China’s strategic behaviour, especially the development over the past 30 years of military capabilities which would be sufficient for an invasion, this book characterises China’s strategic culture as 'offensive realist' in nature and discusses the implications for Taiwan’s security and the future role of the US in the Western Pacific. In this talk, we consider the implications of the book's findings for the UK's Taiwan policy and the wider intellectual agenda for Asian security studies.