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 saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
Taiwan-India relations appear to have been put on the back burner this year, including on Taiwan’s side. Geopolitical pressures have compelled both countries to recalibrate their priorities, even as their core security challenges remain unchanged. However, what is striking is the visible decline in the attention India once received from Taiwan. The absence of the annual Diwali celebrations for the Indian community and the lack of a commemoration marking the 30-year anniversary of the representative offices, the India Taipei Association and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center, speak volumes and raise serious questions about whether Taiwan still has a coherent India
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