China is angry about US President Barack Obama’s meeting with Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, and the US ambassador to China has been called in to take the flak.
One might expect the situation to heat up following the Lunar New Year break, with a concomitant cooling of relations between the two countries. While we can expect tensions in Sino-US relations, there are other aspects that are less easily anticipated.
There is a certain pattern of events when it comes to relations with China that every US president has had to face. The first phase is characterized by working hard to create an amicable atmosphere. In the second phase, frictions appear as the US president addresses practical issues and this is where relations become more tense. The third phase is where the two sides accept their differences and find ways to work together, feeling out their counterpart’s bottom line and gradually moving into the fourth, more pragmatic phase.
Obama is already into the second year of his presidency and his inbox is piling up. Predictably, Sino-US relations are entering a testing phase.
The sabers are already drawn, with recent tensions over economic issues, the Google hack attacks and US arms sales to Taiwan. Obama’s decision to meet the Dalai Lama added fuel to the fire, giving the more hawkish elements in Beijing an excuse to push for a harder line against the US. This is likely to cause a cooling of relations that will take us into more unpredictable territory.
The meeting with the Tibetan leader had been planned some time ago — as early as last year — but had been delayed in deference to China. Beijing was also given plenty of time to prepare its response, as the announcement of the date for the meeting was made well in advance.
China’s response, as usual, was that it did not want the leaders of any nation to grant an audience to the Dalai Lama, whom they consider a “splittist.”
The problem is that China pretty much stands alone on that point — the Dalai Lama is mostly viewed elsewhere in a positive light, as a respected religious and ethnic leader and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. China is not going to win anyone’s approval by its intransigence on this issue.
As China’s power and influence in international matters grows it is going to have more opportunities to compete as well as cooperate with the US in international affairs and trade. As it does so, it is going to become more difficult to sweep any differences of opinion or conflicts of interest under the carpet. Both sides are going to have to learn the benefits of cooperation and “constructive conflict.”
If China feels the need to turn up the heat, it risks not only damaging bilateral relations with the US, but also of reversing the current trend of regional integration and replacing it with a polarization of international relations that would do no good for China, the US or the international community.
Both China and the US are currently facing a range of domestic challenges and in future they are going to have to address a number of issues together, such as stabilizing the global economy, dealing with climate change and preventing weapons proliferation. These issues are going to require cooperation and China would do well to recognize the differences it has with other countries and make an effort to tone down its confrontational behavior.
In the first year of his second term, US President Donald Trump continued to shake the foundations of the liberal international order to realize his “America first” policy. However, amid an atmosphere of uncertainty and unpredictability, the Trump administration brought some clarity to its policy toward Taiwan. As expected, bilateral trade emerged as a major priority for the new Trump administration. To secure a favorable trade deal with Taiwan, it adopted a two-pronged strategy: First, Trump accused Taiwan of “stealing” chip business from the US, indicating that if Taipei did not address Washington’s concerns in this strategic sector, it could revisit its Taiwan
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) challenges and ignores the international rules-based order by violating Taiwanese airspace using a high-flying drone: This incident is a multi-layered challenge, including a lawfare challenge against the First Island Chain, the US, and the world. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) defines lawfare as “controlling the enemy through the law or using the law to constrain the enemy.” Chen Yu-cheng (陳育正), an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of China Military Affairs Studies, at Taiwan’s Fu Hsing Kang College (National Defense University), argues the PLA uses lawfare to create a precedent and a new de facto legal
Chile has elected a new government that has the opportunity to take a fresh look at some key aspects of foreign economic policy, mainly a greater focus on Asia, including Taiwan. Still, in the great scheme of things, Chile is a small nation in Latin America, compared with giants such as Brazil and Mexico, or other major markets such as Colombia and Argentina. So why should Taiwan pay much attention to the new administration? Because the victory of Chilean president-elect Jose Antonio Kast, a right-of-center politician, can be seen as confirming that the continent is undergoing one of its periodic political shifts,
Taiwan’s long-term care system has fallen into a structural paradox. Staffing shortages have led to a situation in which almost 20 percent of the about 110,000 beds in the care system are vacant, but new patient admissions remain closed. Although the government’s “Long-term Care 3.0” program has increased subsidies and sought to integrate medical and elderly care systems, strict staff-to-patient ratios, a narrow labor pipeline and rising inflation-driven costs have left many small to medium-sized care centers struggling. With nearly 20,000 beds forced to remain empty as a consequence, the issue is not isolated management failures, but a far more
RSS