The US alliance structure would serve to constrain US President Donald Trump’s ability to negotiate directly with China, US academic Francis Fukuyama said yesterday in Taipei.
“There’s frequently talk about the need for some kind of G2, where the US and China negotiate directly to manage their relationship and I just think that that’s not a realistic outcome,” he said, speaking at a forum on US-China relations organized by former premier Jiang Yi-huah’s (江宜樺) Fair Winds Foundation.
“[This view is] sort of like what the European great powers did in the 19th century, when everyone else was just a colony of a European power and colonies were traded back and forth, but the world isn’t structured like this anymore — the United States has many alliances,” he said. “We don’t have an alliance exactly with Taiwan, but we certainly have a long-standing moral commitment, and you’re not living in a world where the United States is going to go to China and say that because we want X out of you, we’ll give you Taiwan or the East China Sea.”
While Trump is unlikely to abandon the US alliance structure, an attempt to force a renegotiation of cost-sharing might have more credibility than previous US administrations, he said.
“It’s actually very hard to undermine an existing big international institution — I think what’s going to happen is the United States is not going to invest any effort into expanding that set of institutions, and it’s going to continue to keep putting pressure on its allies to pay more,” he said.
While there is still potential for a “grand bargain” with China over allowing South Korea to reunite the Korean Peninsula while withdrawing US troops, Chinese negotiators have so far been unwilling to countenance the potential collapse of North Korea, he said.
Fukuyama also criticized the opposition of former US president Barack Obama’s administration to China’s establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing for residents of Kinmen and Lienchiang counties to acquire Chinese ID cards in a bid to “blur national identities,” a source said. The efforts are part of China’s promotion of a “Kinmen-Xiamen twin-city living sphere, including a cross-strait integration pilot zone in China’s Fujian Province,” the source said. “The CCP is already treating residents of these outlying islands as Chinese citizens. It has also intensified its ‘united front’ efforts and infiltration of those islands,” the source said. “There is increasing evidence of espionage in Kinmen, particularly of Taiwanese military personnel being recruited by the
ENTERTAINERS IN CHINA: Taiwanese generally back the government being firm on infiltration and ‘united front’ work,’ the Asia-Pacific Elite Interchange Association said Most people support the government probing Taiwanese entertainers for allegedly “amplifying” the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda, a survey conducted by the Asia-Pacific Elite Interchange Association showed on Friday. Public support stood at 56.4 percent for action by the Mainland Affairs Council and the Ministry of Culture to enhance scrutiny on Taiwanese performers and artists who have developed careers in China while allegedly adhering to the narrative of Beijing’s propaganda that denigrates or harms Taiwanese sovereignty, the poll showed. Thirty-three percent did not support the action, it showed. The poll showed that 51.5 percent of respondents supported the government’s investigation into Taiwanese who have
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
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