The Telegraph, August 7 2022, Roger Bootle
At one point when he was Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan was asked what he feared most.
He allegedly replied: “Events, dear boy, events”. Over the last few years, both statesmen and the rest of us have had more than our fill of “events” and now we have to face another one: namely the crisis over Taiwan.
The tension caused by the visit to the island by Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, is merely the latest episode in a long and serious deterioration of the relationship between China and the West. The Taiwan issue will not die down after Ms Pelosi’s safe return. It is a festering sore.
This threatens to have dreadful consequences that go well beyond the narrowly economic. If this develops into a shooting war involving the United States then the results would be devastating. Even assuming we avoid the worst, the economic fallout is going to be significant.
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