US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, saying that the US was seeking stronger economic and military ties with India to balance an increasingly defiant China.
“The United States seeks constructive relations with China, but we will not shrink from China’s challenges to the rules-based order and where China subverts the sovereignty of neighboring countries and disadvantages the US and our friends,” he said.
The remarks were the culmination of a year fraught with conflict in the two nations’ relationship, starting with US President Donald Trump in April accusing China of “currency misalignment,” which he said was more significant than “currency manipulation” as a cause of trade deficits. In the following month, two Chinese aircraft conducted an unprofessional intercept of a US Navy surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea, and in July, Trump blasted China on Twitter for doing nothing about North Korea despite making “hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade” from the US.
Tillerson at the time said that relations between the two nations had reached a “pivot point,” while Orville Schell, the head of the center on US-China relations at New York’s Asia Society, said that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had missed the chance for convergence and that Trump was “starting to turn on him.”
In a hearing in Washington on Oct. 12, the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs unanimously passed the Taiwan Travel Act, which seeks to encourage visits between Taiwan and the US at all levels.
The move immediately drew criticism from China, with Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai (崔天凱) urging US leaders to use their power to block the bill. US Representative Eliot Engel, a ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, responded by saying that “the letter stood out because of its threatening tone” and that “it is interesting to me that they [China] now feel that they can get away with these kinds of threats and vague pressure tactics with the US Congress.”
Meanwhile, US military officials on Monday allegedly inspected the Republic of China (ROC) Navy’s fast combat support ship Panshi to evaluate its capacity for battlefield medical support. Sources said that the inspection was to prepare for potential conflict with North Korea, but the choice to work with the ROC Navy instead of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy, which has five hospital ships, the largest of which houses 300 beds, is evidence of the deteriorating US-China relationship.
Taiwan will become increasingly important to the US, both militarily and politically. The US has a tradition of continuously shifting geopolitical alliances to maintain balances of power, and Taiwan will once again be important in facilitating this strategy as it applies to China.
The US maintained relations with Taiwan and India in the 1960s, under the administrations of presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, as a bulwark against communist China and Russia. However, under former US president Richard Nixon’s administration, the US switched alliances to Pakistan and China to counter the greater threat of Russia.
Relations between the US and Pakistan began to sour from the early 2000s with the US accusing Pakistan of harboring terrorists, and Pakistan accusing the US of doing nothing to control security in Afghanistan.
In seeking to strengthen ties with Taiwan and India, the Trump administration should remain cordial with Pakistan and China, while asserting its right to define its own foreign relations despite protests.
The US is highly unlikely to stop recognizing the PRC, but it might refuse China’s insistence on the so-called “one China” principle. Taiwan should stress with US lawmakers its intention to restructure its Constitution and to assert its sovereignty, whether under the ROC framework with a redefined national territory or as a newly named nation.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations