Chapter 5 looks at Chinese coercion regarding Taiwan, involving foreign arms sales to Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995 and 1996. China used moderate coercion measures toward the United States over arms sales to Taiwan until 2008. The cost-balancing theory does not perfectly explain the 1992 case of US weapons sales to Taiwan, which instead highlighted economic concerns. As for the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, China escalated to militarized coercion, the magnitude of which was the greatest among all cases of Chinese coercion concerning territorial disputes, Taiwan, and Tibet in the post-Cold War era, because Taiwan is a “core interest.” This chapter demonstrates the significance of the issue importance variable in issues involving Taiwan and shows that the cost-balancing theory travels beyond territorial disputes. This suggests that because Taiwan continues to be one of China’s core interests, it is highly likely China will resort to military coercion again in the future. In particular, if Taiwan decides to pursue judiciary independence, then it is highly likely that China will resort to military coercion, or even the use of force.

In 2019, the Knight Foundation surveyed 4,000 “persistent nonvoters” – people who had stayed home for the majority of the previous six national elections. These people are, as the survey data suggest, not deeply involved in politics. In fact, they are unusual for the total lack of involvement: Voter turnout in America is not as high as it could be, but most people vote at least in presidential elections if they are eligible. From one perspective, the nonvoters in both, Knight’s survey and, later, their focus groups, serve as a contrast to the deeply involved people in Chapter 3 – people who stayed up late at night reading the news and felt anxious when they could not follow the news. But from another perspective, many of the nonvoters were acutely aware of politics: The focus group participant we quote earlier reports that their voting options “suck,” another participant worried about voting for the “lesser of two evils,” and still another questioned whether people in government can actually represent them.