A source in the Executive Yuan on Tuesday said that the US’ aim in including Taiwan in its strategy for the Indo-Pacific region was to contain Chinese expansionism, and that mutual goals in the region were a driving force behind cooperation between the nations on infrastructure projects in developing countries.
Taiwanese policymakers for the past several weeks have been weighing how a change in the US administration would affect Taipei’s ties with Washington, particularly in terms of US support in the face of increasing Chinese aggression.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has said that the nation’s US policy would remain unchanged, and academics have argued that the US’ Taiwan policies would also likely remain the same, given a high degree of support for Taiwan across both of the major US political parties.
Adding weight to those claims, Taiwan and the US on Friday last week held their first Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue, and afterward signed a five-year memorandum of understanding, pledging to establish teams to tackle issues including infrastructure and energy.
China has in the past few years stepped up its investments in Southeast Asia and Oceania to influence policy there, and to drive out Taiwan and the US. An article published on Aug. 4 by what was then the Nikkei Asian Review argued that the threat from Chinese investment of about US$10 billion annually in the region is minimal, as it is still less than half of Japan’s US$24 billion per year.
A report published on Sept. 28 by pri.org said a Belt and Road Initiative project had “forced Cambodians from their land and devastated the environment, hurting the livelihoods of local communities, all under the guise of converting Cambodia into a regional logistics hub and tourist destination” for China.
There have also been reports of Beijing capitalizing on the inability of nations such as Sri Lanka to repay Belt and Road loans to take over key ports.
Obviously this presents a security concern for the US, but beyond that it excludes nations such as Taiwan and the US from engaging with those countries diplomatically. Taipei and Washington must communicate with nations in South Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania to learn of their development needs, to be able to provide assistance before China can lock in a stranglehold. This would also be in the interests of Australia and New Zealand, and would be cause for a regional alliance of like-minded nations.
One of the major benefits to Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and the US in helping build infrastructure would be to allow south and southeast Asian nations to break free from their reliance on China, and to shift production to a friendly, distributed supply chain.
An Aug. 21 article published on The Diplomat Web site argued that the US must break its dependency on China, as the “high-tech sector is a critical element to both economic and military strength and stability.”
Taiwan is in a good position to cooperate with the US on high-tech design and production, and Southeast Asia is in a good position to handle general manufacturing — provided that Taipei and Washington can assist with infrastructure development.
Shifting the supply chain to southeast and south Asia would allow Taiwan and the US to support the regions, while also overcoming security and supply-chain concerns posed by reliance on China.
The government is likely to seek opportunities for cooperation with the US under the administration of US president-elect Joe Biden. Those opportunities will likely emphasize regional security, but if they can also emphasize a decoupling from China, and an investment in infrastructure in Southeast and South Asia, that will be a boon to industries there, while also benefiting regional security.
Taiwan and its allies must send a clear message that Chinese investment that victimizes its recipients is not welcome.
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
RSS