This is easy to answer, Taiwan exports many resources to the US. TSMC is just one company in Taiwan that not only the US but most other countries in the world depend on. It generates the vast majority of the silicon powering our machines and is sovereign neutral meaning not allied and special treatment to a specific country.

Don’t think the US will sit back quietly while China fucks up their economy

The answer is simple: The US is the Global Hegemon of our times, and furthermore, it is a formal guarantor of Taiwan's security (this is similar in many ways to its allies in NATO). Economically, Taiwan and the US have deep ties: it would make sense for the US to come to Taiwan's aid for this reason alone. Whether the ally is across the Pacific or elsewhere scarcely matters to the US, because it has power projection capability that spans the entire planet. That is doubly so when you consider that it is allied with almost all the major developed countries and almost every single one of China's neighbors (Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and to a lesser extent Vietnam and India).

If China were the hegemon in the 1800s, then of course it would have intervened in the Civil War. Take France, which was a World Power (and traditional rival of Great Britain) during the War for Independence. It did provide support to the US, and was their primary ally.

Because Taiwan would like help, and it's in our interest to give it. It's not like the US is intervening against the wishes of Taiwan.

> Should China or some similar power of the time have meddled in the US civil war? Or maybe the War for Independence?

France, a country from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, played a decisive role in the War of independence.

Alliances.

I personally hope we help our friends in Taiwan.

Well, France meddled in the American Revolutionary War to hurt Britain. That's just the reality of what rival states do.

I know that, it was a rhetorical question to shed the illusion of some "hollier than thou" "intervention for good".

The way your comment was phrased ("Should China or some similar power of the time have meddled in the US civil war? Or maybe the War for Independence?") implied that other powers didn't in fact meddle in American affairs, so I wanted to point out that other powers did in fact intervene.

In my previous reply, I gave a "realist" explanation for this, that it was merely what great powers do. However, I actually want to step back from my previous explanation because I don't think it properly conveys the moral aspect of the conflict. Taiwan is a democratic nation that is de-facto sovereign, and China is a non-democratic nation. If you believe that democracy is good, that governments derive their legitimacy from consent of the governed, and that all people have inalienable human rights, then you should support the defense of Taiwan. If China tries to annex Taiwan, America should intervene and America would be in the right. In my view, "Why Die for Taiwan?" is the new "Why Die for Danzig?" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Die_for_Danzig%3F)

It's interesting that you mention the American Civil War. The father of the Chinese nation, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, founded China upon his Three Principles of the People: nationhood, democracy, and social welfare, which he theorized from a famous line from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Unfortunately, Dr. Sun's vision has not become reality for China, but it is alive on Taiwan. I am an American of the Han ethnicity, and I believe that democracy is how governments derive their legitimacy. My dream is a democratic China, and Taiwan is a symbol of what China could be. If China sets out to annex Taiwan, I hope that Americans are willing to consecrate the ground of Taiwan so that Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People shall not perish from the earth.

Rival Chinese and Taiwanese political factions are squabbling in the Solomon Islands to the extent that the largest island is threatening to secede after the government switched its support from Taiwan to China.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/02/solomon-island...

It would appear that both nations themselves have enough agency, economic power, and diplomatic clout to play their own Great Games. None is righteous, no, not one.

the cause of the would-be war is that the two sides could not agree whether or not they are the same country. By calling it a "civil war" you just dismissed the whole point of it.

also ethnicity has nothing to do with sovereign, nor that it exists a single "China" ethnicity, for Taiwanese people (who themselves are not a single ethnicity) to be lumped into. China just like all countries in the world, has many ethnicities.

The simple answer for your question is, because one side asked, and this kind of intervention has countless precedence in geopolitics. I reckon China probably has asked for external help several times in its history.

There's kind of a general principle of the world's human rights respecting democracies standing up to some local dictatorship trying to invade and pick off one of them. See also Israel, Finland, the Falklands etc.

You could say the exact same thing about South Korea/North Korea, or Ukraine/Russia.

The Cold War dies hard.

That doesn't make it any better, not one single bit.

It doesn't make it any better or right, but it does answer the OP's question of "why".

Not to mention, the American Revolution was partially won because similar powers France and Spain backed the revolutionaries. The Confederacy courted both Britain and France and there was a chance that the former could have gotten involved in the Civil War over the Trent Affair. Great powers have been dipping their toes into regional conflicts since time immemorial. It's highly credulous to assume they'd do otherwise.

No, I disagree. The notion that the US is doing anything other than trying to violently hang on to its attempts at a global, dictatorial, murderous empire, that only ever benefits the white west at best, is crazy.

Again, I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it's the way things are done, and it's no more or less just or unjust than China supporting Ugandan dictator Museveni in pursuit of its regional interests, even as massive electoral fraud is perpetrated against the democratic opposition Bobi Wine.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3122668/ch...

Not to mention, it's quite presumptuous to claim that the self-determination of the people of Taiwan are simply a tool that benefits the "white west."

Finally, your value judgments don't really contradict anything I stated, which is simply that "great powers will meddle in the affairs of smaller nations."

Taiwan is firmly part of the US empire.

Just because someone done something in the past, doesn't make it right necessarily for everyone to do in the future.

If the the US was not getting economic and political projection in Taiwan, they would dump them in a second and/or create a lot of trouble for them.

> Just because someone done something in the past, doesn't make it right necessarily for everyone to do in the future.

I did not say it was right at all. You are the one making moral judgments here. I'm simply stating historical facts. Notice I did not at any time make the claim that just "because everyone does it" makes it excusable or right. But it does make it understandable, as an institutionalized practice or character trait of empires.

> If the the US was not getting economic and political projection in Taiwan, they would dump them in a second and/or create a lot of trouble for them.

You are introducing non sequiturs at this point. At no point did I support nor reject empire. Furthermore, Taiwan, like other U.S. allies or client states, has its own vested interests in being part of an alliance, because they (ostensibly) receive protection. You are denying that Taiwan has agency in seeking out advantageous (in its view) alliances. That is very condescending, and frankly, chauvinist.

> Should China or some similar power of the time have meddled in the US civil war? Or maybe the War for Independence?

You mean like France, Netherlands and Spain supported the insurgents against the UK?