In recent years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has shown an impatient determination to resolve Taiwan’s status in a way his predecessors never did. He has ordered a meteoric military buildup, instructing Chinese forces to give him by 2027 a full range of options for unifying Taiwan. These signals are triggering debate in Washington and elsewhere about whether Taiwan is strategically and economically important enough to merit protection through the most challenging of contingencies. But make no mistake: whether one cares about the future of democracy in Asia or prefers to ponder only the cold math of realpolitik, Taiwan’s fate matters.