US president-elect Donald Trump won the US election because he refused to play by the rules and his non-traditional approach to foreign policies as an incoming US president only reaffirmed his tendency to break the rules. Politicians, academia and the media have all described him as “unpredictable.”
Advocates of Sinocentrism in Taiwan and China have denounced him as a mere “businessman” who would go back on his word at every opportunity to get what he can.
Some say that Taiwanese who expect Trump to help Taiwan following his telephone call with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) will be disappointed.
Chinese should be fearful of Trump. Chinese emperors and leaders, well-versed in the art of politics, have always controlled their people and neighboring nations through intimidation — specifically by creating the illusion that they are fearless and unpredictable — and promoting nationalism.
However, Trump is also unpredictable. Moreover, having run with the campaign slogan “Make America great again,” Trump is undaunted by the prospect of an arms race with China. His tactics toward China are exactly what the latter has been using toward others.
Since the time of former US president Richard Nixon and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who typically supported collaborating with China to counter the Soviet Union, the US has been employing a double standard that has allowed China to get away with much of what it wants. This has been an issue for so long that people have come to accept it as normal.
As Chinese-American academic Yu Ying-shih (余英時) has said, for the past several decades the US has been afraid of offending China to the point where it would compromise its principles to appease Beijing, but fortunately this problem is almost entirely cured now.
Despite pressure from Beijing, Trump has answered Tsai’s telephone call, made pungent remarks about China’s seizure of a US underwater drone, threatened to strengthen and expand the US’ nuclear weapons, and is apparently not trying to avoid initiating an arms race. He knows Beijing’s threats are mere bluff, which is essential in putting China in its place.
His aggressive stance is in line with a US Republican tradition that can be traced back to former US secretary of state John Dulles and former US president Ronald Reagan.
While Dulles prevented the spread of communism with his policy of brinkmanship, Reagan dragged down the Soviet Union by engaging it in a space race.
With its enormous land and population and a domineering attitude, China has for years ignored international rules and has often taken advantage of other nations to boost its own economy. Nevertheless, the US has finally come to realize the harm that China has done.
Beijing, which tends to be overconfident, has viewed the US’ eagerness for cooperation as a sign that it is in decline. However, the rise of Trump will likely change many things. His demand that China must play by international rules, or a trade war or arms race would be inevitable, is exactly what China has been fearing.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Tu Yu-an
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS