While the world is focused on the goodwill that this year’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea supposedly brought to the Korean Peninsula, China has been ever-so-quietly increasing its military pressure on Taiwan, causing fear that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is imminent. However, recent actions by Washington — and learning from the lessons of 1950 — make such an invasion less likely.
What China has been doing over the past few months is not any different from what it did in late 2016 and early last year when it conducted surveillance missions around Taiwan or when its aircraft carrier sailed near the nation.
Relations between China and Taiwan have not changed since the inauguration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in May 2016. What has changed, though, is US-China relations and the threat posed by North Korea.
Taiwan has done nothing out of the ordinary to cause China to increase pressure, but the US has. The US passed the Defense Authorization Act (DAA) for Fiscal Year 2018, which calls for increased military exchanges between the US and Taiwan, authorizes port calls to Taiwan for the first time and invites Taiwan to participate in bilateral naval drills.
The Taiwan Travel Act recently passed both the US House and Senate and is awaiting US President Donald Trump's signature for it to become law.
Trump’s National Security Strategy also labeled China as a competitor, which did not help the situation. These new measures have caused Taiwan, not the US, to draw the ire of China, which is normally the case.
The Chinese Communist Party understands that it is easier to pressure or target Taiwan in subtle ways than it is the US
In early December last year, Li Kexin (李克新), a minister at the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “The day that a US Navy vessel arrives in Kaohsiung is the day that our People’s Liberation Army unifies Taiwan with military force.”
With the ongoing nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula and the poor state of cross-strait relations, governments are scrambling to decrease tension in the region. The Asia-Pacific region faced similar circumstances in the early 1950s, and it is worth exploring the similarities and differences between past and present to see what the future might hold.
On Jan. 12, 1950, then-US secretary of state Dean Acheson gave a foreign policy speech on US commitments and involvements in Asia at the US National Press Club in what became one of the most controversial speeches he ever gave.
Acheson declared that Washington’s policy toward Asia at that stage of the Cold War centered on holding a “defensive perimeter” that ran from the Aleutian Islands to Japan to the Ryukyu Islands and down to the Philippines.
At the time, the US had military bases or personnel at these locations, so his statements made sense.
However, controversially, two locations were conspicuously missing from this defensive perimeter: Korea and Taiwan.
Then-US president Harry Truman’s administration’s rationale for not including Korea and Taiwan within the defense perimeter was that it was trying to develop Korea into a self-sufficient country after years of US aid.
As for Taiwan, Truman believed that Mao Zedong (毛澤東), having triumphed in China the previous autumn, would inevitably invade the nation and finally defeat the last remnants of Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) defeated forces. The speech was to solidifying the first steps in a policy shift in the region.
The US public — and the Soviets, North Koreans and Chinese — interpreted the omission of Korea and Taiwan at the time as the US not willing to get involved in military conflicts there.
As history has shown, the belief that the US was giving up Korea and Taiwan turned out to be wrong: Once then-North Korean premier Kim Il-sung received tacit approval from Joseph Stalin to launch his invasion of South Korea, the US responded with a massive intervention to preserve South Korean independence.
Korea and Taiwan’s omission from Acheson’s speech in 1950 nevertheless shaped many countries’ Asia policies for years to come.
We know that the US has stationed troops in South Korea since the end of the Korean War. We know that even though the US switched recognition from the Republic of China to the People’s Republic of China, the US still provides “such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capacity.” The US did not abandon Taiwan either.
What does this history lesson mean for what is happening with Korea and Taiwan today?
The geopolitical landscape in Asia right now is eerily similar to that of Acheson’s 1950: a belligerent North Korea and the belief that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is imminent. Those were in the background during Acheson’s 1950 speech, and part of the reason that speech was given.
Many fear that Trump could tweet his way into a war, but can we really expect him or anyone in his administration to give such a speech like Acheson’s, abandoning a key regional ally?
The red line has moved further into Asia. And this time, it includes South Korea and Taiwan.
Gone are the days of ambiguity over the US’ stance on defending South Korea. Although the US has a more ambiguous stance toward Taiwan, under the Trump administration, the US’ commitments — thanks to the US Congress — have increased.
As long as the North Korea issue looms large over the region and world, China will not invade Taiwan. Maintaining North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s regime and preventing a unified, pro-US South Korea on its border is a higher priority for China than retaking Taiwan.
This is not to say that peace will prevail and China will alleviate its pressure on Taiwan. No, China will continue to try to poke holes through Taiwan’s air defenses and be a general gadfly, but Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) understands — or should — that Taiwan and North Korea are linked by a speech given nearly 70 years ago.
Thomas Shattuck is the editor of Geopoliticus: The FPRI Blog and a research associate at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
A failure by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to respond to Israel’s brilliant 12-day (June 12-23) bombing and special operations war against Iran, topped by US President Donald Trump’s ordering the June 21 bombing of Iranian deep underground nuclear weapons fuel processing sites, has been noted by some as demonstrating a profound lack of resolve, even “impotence,” by China. However, this would be a dangerous underestimation of CCP ambitions and its broader and more profound military response to the Trump Administration — a challenge that includes an acceleration of its strategies to assist nuclear proxy states, and developing a wide array
Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), former chairman of Broadcasting Corp of China and leader of the “blue fighters,” recently announced that he had canned his trip to east Africa, and he would stay in Taiwan for the recall vote on Saturday. He added that he hoped “his friends in the blue camp would follow his lead.” His statement is quite interesting for a few reasons. Jaw had been criticized following media reports that he would be traveling in east Africa during the recall vote. While he decided to stay in Taiwan after drawing a lot of flak, his hesitation says it all: If
Twenty-four Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers are facing recall votes on Saturday, prompting nearly all KMT officials and lawmakers to rally their supporters over the past weekend, urging them to vote “no” in a bid to retain their seats and preserve the KMT’s majority in the Legislative Yuan. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which had largely kept its distance from the civic recall campaigns, earlier this month instructed its officials and staff to support the recall groups in a final push to protect the nation. The justification for the recalls has increasingly been framed as a “resistance” movement against China and
Saturday is the day of the first batch of recall votes primarily targeting lawmakers of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). The scale of the recall drive far outstrips the expectations from when the idea was mooted in January by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘). The mass recall effort is reminiscent of the Sunflower movement protests against the then-KMT government’s non-transparent attempts to push through a controversial cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014. That movement, initiated by students, civic groups and non-governmental organizations, included student-led protesters occupying the main legislative chamber for three weeks. The two movements are linked
RSS