US President Barack Obama has cautioned US president-elect Donald Trump against allowing relations with China to slip into “full conflict mode” after Trump put Beijing’s nose out of joint with a succession of controversial pre-inauguration foreign policy interventions.
Speaking on Friday at what is likely to be his last White House news conference, Obama urged his successor to beware of provoking a “very significant” response from Beijing over Taiwan.
The past two weeks have seen Trump take a series of public swipes at China, accusing Beijing of manipulating the yuan, building “a massive fortress” in the South China Sea and not doing enough to pressure North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Photo: AFP
Most controversially of all, the billionaire has also hinted he might upend nearly four decades of US-China ties by offering greater recognition to the government of Taiwan.
Trump’s questioning of the so-called “one China” principle drew protests from Beijing and led one state-run newspaper to call for swift preparations for a military invasion of Taiwan.
Obama said that, under a decades-old policy, China “views Taiwan as part of China, but recognizes that it has to approach Taiwan as an entity that has its own ways of doing things,” while Taiwan had agreed that, with some autonomy, it would not declare independence.
“That status quo, although not completely satisfactory to any of the parties involved, has kept the peace and allowed the Taiwanese to be a pretty successful ... economy and a people who have a high degree of self-determination,” Obama said.
Obama said he had advised Trump that foreign policy had to be conducted in a systematic, deliberate, intentional way.
Obama said Trump needed to grasp “that for China the issue of Taiwan is as important as anything on their docket.”
“The idea of ‘one China’ is at the heart of their conception as a nation and so if you are going to upend this understanding, you have to have thought through what the consequences are,” Obama said. “Because the Chinese will not treat that the way they will treat some other issues. They won’t even treat it the way they treat issues around the South China Sea, where we have had a lot of tensions. This goes to the core of how they see themselves and their reaction on this issue could end up being very significant.”
In Taipei, the government reiterated that it was committed to maintaining the “status quo” in its relations with China and in promoting peace and stability, and thanked Washington for deepening Taiwan-US relations.
A statement from the Presidential Office said the government looked forward to strengthening that relationship during Trump’s administration.
Obama said the importance of US-China collaboration in areas such as the global economy, security and international affairs was now such that “there is probably no bilateral relationship that carries more significance.”
“And where there is also the potential — if that relationship breaks down or goes into a full conflict mode — that everybody is worse off,” Obama added.
Foreign policy specialists on both sides of the Pacific have expressed concern at the potential for upheaval if Trump’s early forays into China policy continue after he takes office on Jan. 20.
Orville Schell, the head of the Center on US-China Relations at New York’s Asia Society, said that by threatening to defy Beijing over Taiwan Trump had “bearded the dragon.”
“He has probed the most sensitive nerve in US-China relations — the territorial integrity of the motherland and the idea of the inevitable return of Taiwan to the motherland’s embrace,” Schell said. “I am intrigued with Trump’s ability to disequilibrate what was something of a standoff” between the US and China.
Obama’s “virtue was to try to be consistent, steadfast and not to react too much from the gut and too emotionally. And here you have an incoming president who is exactly the opposite in each of those categories,” Schell added.
Then-US president Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, relegating Taiwan to part of “one China.”
LIMITS: While China increases military pressure on Taiwan and expands its use of cognitive warfare, it is unwilling to target tech supply chains, the report said US and Taiwan military officials have warned that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could implement a blockade within “a matter of hours” and need only “minimal conversion time” prior to an attack on Taiwan, a report released on Tuesday by the US Senate’s China Economic and Security Review Commission said. “While there is no indication that China is planning an imminent attack, the United States and its allies and partners can no longer assume that a Taiwan contingency is a distant possibility for which they would have ample time to prepare,” it said. The commission made the comments in its annual
DETERMINATION: Beijing’s actions toward Tokyo have drawn international attention, but would likely bolster regional coordination and defense networks, the report said Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s administration is likely to prioritize security reforms and deterrence in the face of recent “hybrid” threats from China, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said. The bureau made the assessment in a written report to the Legislative Yuan ahead of an oral report and questions-and-answers session at the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The key points of Japan’s security reforms would be to reinforce security cooperation with the US, including enhancing defense deployment in the first island chain, pushing forward the integrated command and operations of the Japan Self-Defense Forces and US Forces Japan, as
‘TROUBLEMAKER’: Most countries believe that it is China — rather than Taiwan — that is undermining regional peace and stability with its coercive tactics, the president said China should restrain itself and refrain from being a troublemaker that sabotages peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday. Lai made the remarks after China Coast Guard vessels sailed into disputed waters off the Senkaku Islands — known as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) in Taiwan — following a remark Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made regarding Taiwan. Takaichi during a parliamentary session on Nov. 7 said that a “Taiwan contingency” involving a Chinese naval blockade could qualify as a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, and trigger Tokyo’s deployment of its military for defense. Asked about the escalating tensions
The Ministry of Economic Affairs said it plans to revise the export control list for strategic high-tech products by adding 18 items under three categories — advanced 3D printing equipment, advanced semiconductor equipment and quantum computers — which would require local manufacturers to obtain licenses for their export. The ministry’s announcement yesterday came as the International Trade Administration issued a 60-day preview period for planned revisions to the Export Control List for Dual Use Items and Technology (軍商兩用貨品及技術出口管制清單) and the Common Military List (一般軍用貨品清單), which fall under regulations governing export destinations for strategic high-tech commodities and specific strategic high-tech commodities. The
RSS