US President Joe Biden on Tuesday said he had promised Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that the US would “abide by the Taiwan agreement,” but did not clarify what that agreement was.
The US-Taiwan relationship is characterized by the stipulations laid out in the Three Joint Communiques, the Taiwan Relations Act, the “six assurances” and the Taiwan Travel Act. Of those, only the Three Joint Communiques represent agreements between China and the US on the issue of Taiwan — the others were instituted unilaterally by the US.
The “six assurances” specifically represent a unilateral amendment by the US to the terms of the third communique, designed to reassure Taiwan of its commitment to the nation in the absence of formal relations. One of the assurances is that the US has not changed its “longstanding position on the issue of sovereignty over Taiwan.”
Biden might feel that he reached some tacit agreement with Xi, but Xi is likely to have interpreted Biden’s comments as an assurance that Washington would follow its so-called “one China” policy.
This disconnect in US-China communications on Taiwan has existed since the Three Joint Communiques. For example, the first communique of 1972 is often cited by those outside of China as merely an “acknowledgement” — and not an “acceptance” — by the US of the Chinese position that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China.”
Since 1972, the US has always maintained a position of strategic ambiguity on the issue of Taiwanese sovereignty, and this has not changed under Biden. That is why when Biden compared the US’ commitment to Taiwan to its commitment to NATO in an interview with ABC on Aug. 18, US officials the following day rushed to clarify that Biden had “misspoken.” Similarly, when Biden spoke with reporters outside the White House on Tuesday, he was merely speaking off the cuff and was not making any assertions about the US-Taiwan relationship.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that Biden’s comments were a “reiteration of previous American statements,” the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
Some have argued that the US cannot maintain strategic ambiguity on Taiwan for much longer given an increasingly aggressive China. That fact is not lost on Washington, and that is why this year saw the formation of the Australia-UK-US security pact known as AUKUS, a historically large Orient Shield exercise, the Large-Scale Exercise 2021 and other major military drills in the Indo-Pacific region.
The US Department of State also issued a statement on Sunday saying that Washington was “very concerned by the People’s Republic of China’s provocative military activity near Taiwan” and that its “commitment to Taiwan is rock solid.”
The signing into law by former US president Donald Trump on March 16, 2018, of the Taiwan Travel Act — which allows high-level US-Taiwan exchanges — demonstrates that there are voices in the US calling for a stronger US-Taiwan relationship, free of the US’ self-imposed restrictions on that relationship following the Three Joint Communiques.
The communiques were issued at a time when the US believed it would be beneficial to work with Beijing to counter the Soviet Union. Now that the Soviet Union has dissolved, China and Russia are on friendly terms and China has become the greatest threat to the US and to the free world, why should the US continue to be bound by the communiques?
China has become an integral part of the world economy, but so is the US. If Washington and Taipei established formal diplomatic ties, Beijing would not dare to cut ties with the US in retaliation — to do so would be economic suicide.
Both major Taiwanese political parties should continue to look for areas where ties with the US could be strengthened with the aim of eventually re-establishing formal diplomatic relations with Washington.
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