Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) met with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in Thailand last weekend in talks described as “candid” and “fruitful.” Taiwan was one of the focuses of the meeting, along with the Iran-backed Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, sparking speculation that the US might use Taiwan as a bargaining chip in return for China’s assistance in the Middle East. Beijing is Tehran’s largest trading partner.
Rest assured, no sitting US president in the current geopolitical climate could make concessions on Taiwan, especially with a US presidential election fast approaching. As Evan Medeiros, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues said recently, Taiwan has become “a democratized issue” in the US “which everyone wants to talk about.”
With former US president Donald Trump waiting in the wings, the last thing US President Joe Biden could do is to appear is weak on China.
However, this is not to say that Taiwan can rest on its laurels. Taiwan faces full-spectrum pressure from China to constrain its international space. In the wake of president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) victory, it was expected that China would use its toolkit of economic and military pressure against Taiwan. Instead, it poached one of the nation’s allies, Nauru, and looks to be coveting another, Tuvalu. A leaked e-mail showed Chinese state-controlled China Global Television Network offering “a senior person in Tuvalu Broadcasting Corp” US$450 to write an opinion piece on Tuvalu potentially cutting ties with Taiwan.
China’s diplomacy since Lai’s victory has been shrewd. The Chinese ministry’s press release following the Sullivan-Wang meeting said: “The US side must abide by … its commitment of not supporting ‘Taiwan independence’ into action and support China’s peaceful reunification,” placing the onus of responsibility in “managing” Taiwan on the US, despite China being the sole driver of tensions.
Today, the legislature is likely to elect incoming-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator-at-large Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) as speaker, which could be a crushing blow for Taiwan’s international participation. Under incumbent speaker, DPP Legislator You Si-kun (游錫?), Taiwan expanded its international space by building parliamentary ties with nations such as Lithuania and the Czech Republic. It is hard to see a KMT speaker, especially a pro-China one like Han, being as proactive as You in building the nation’s international ties.
The incoming Lai administration must think creatively on how to maintain the momentum built up over President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) two terms in expanding Taiwan’s international space. Taiwan has become a global issue, the “front line of democracy” in Tsai’s words, on the side of democracies against the authoritarian challenges of China and Russia trying to reshape the international order in their favor. Lai needs a similar narrative.
Taiwan’s international participation depends not only on the nation’s domestic politics, but also the structure of international order writ large. It is a propitious time for Taiwan, with an activist US, Europe awakening from its geopolitical slumber and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) reminding the world of Beijing’s revisionist intent. China’s deft diplomacy as of now is a tactical shift to draw less attention to it, not a strategic one.
In due course, Beijing is likely to return to its behavior of belligerence and aggression, reminding the democracies of the threat it poses to the world and the need to embrace Taiwan closer. This would provide opportunities for Taipei to reach out and deepen ties. The incoming Lai administration must be on its toes to capitalize on this.
The government and local industries breathed a sigh of relief after Shin Kong Life Insurance Co last week said it would relinquish surface rights for two plots in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) to Nvidia Corp. The US chip-design giant’s plan to expand its local presence will be crucial for Taiwan to safeguard its core role in the global artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem and to advance the nation’s AI development. The land in dispute is owned by the Taipei City Government, which in 2021 sold the rights to develop and use the two plots of land, codenamed T17 and T18, to the
Taiwan’s first case of African swine fever (ASF) was confirmed on Tuesday evening at a hog farm in Taichung’s Wuci District (梧棲), trigging nationwide emergency measures and stripping Taiwan of its status as the only Asian country free of classical swine fever, ASF and foot-and-mouth disease, a certification it received on May 29. The government on Wednesday set up a Central Emergency Operations Center in Taichung and instituted an immediate five-day ban on transporting and slaughtering hogs, and on feeding pigs kitchen waste. The ban was later extended to 15 days, to account for the incubation period of the virus
The ceasefire in the Middle East is a rare cause for celebration in that war-torn region. Hamas has released all of the living hostages it captured on Oct. 7, 2023, regular combat operations have ceased, and Israel has drawn closer to its Arab neighbors. Israel, with crucial support from the United States, has achieved all of this despite concerted efforts from the forces of darkness to prevent it. Hamas, of course, is a longtime client of Iran, which in turn is a client of China. Two years ago, when Hamas invaded Israel — killing 1,200, kidnapping 251, and brutalizing countless others
US President Donald Trump has announced his eagerness to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un while in South Korea for the APEC summit. That implies a possible revival of US-North Korea talks, frozen since 2019. While some would dismiss such a move as appeasement, renewed US engagement with North Korea could benefit Taiwan’s security interests. The long-standing stalemate between Washington and Pyongyang has allowed Beijing to entrench its dominance in the region, creating a myth that only China can “manage” Kim’s rogue nation. That dynamic has allowed Beijing to present itself as an indispensable power broker: extracting concessions from Washington, Seoul
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