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.
In the past month, two important developments are poised to equip Taiwan with expanded capabilities to play foreign policy offense in an age where Taiwan’s diplomatic space is seriously constricted by a hegemonic Beijing. Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) led a delegation of Taiwan and US companies to the Philippines to promote trilateral economic cooperation between the three countries. Additionally, in the past two weeks, Taiwan has placed chip export controls on South Africa in an escalating standoff over the placing of its diplomatic mission in Pretoria, causing the South Africans to pause and ask for consultations to resolve
An altercation involving a 73-year-old woman and a younger person broke out on a Taipei MRT train last week, with videos of the incident going viral online, sparking wide discussions about the controversial priority seats and social norms. In the video, the elderly woman, surnamed Tseng (曾), approached a passenger in a priority seat and demanded that she get up, and after she refused, she swung her bag, hitting her on the knees and calves several times. In return, the commuter asked a nearby passenger to hold her bag, stood up and kicked Tseng, causing her to fall backward and
In December 1937, Japanese troops captured Nanjing and unleashed one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century. Over six weeks, hundreds of thousands were slaughtered and women were raped on a scale that still defies comprehension. Across Asia, the Japanese occupation left deep scars. Singapore, Malaya, the Philippines and much of China endured terror, forced labor and massacres. My own grandfather was tortured by the Japanese in Singapore. His wife, traumatized beyond recovery, lived the rest of her life in silence and breakdown. These stories are real, not abstract history. Here is the irony: Mao Zedong (毛澤東) himself once told visiting
When I reminded my 83-year-old mother on Wednesday that it was the 76th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, she replied: “Yes, it was the day when my family was broken.” That answer captures the paradox of modern China. To most Chinese in mainland China, Oct. 1 is a day of pride — a celebration of national strength, prosperity and global stature. However, on a deeper level, it is also a reminder to many of the families shattered, the freedoms extinguished and the lives sacrificed on the road here. Seventy-six years ago, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東)
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