Last month, a snap general election in the UK saw the ruling Conservative Party defeated and the Labour Party take power for the first time since 2010. With this change, there is now a fresh opportunity for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) under new leadership to chart a new course on relations with Taiwan that identifies and responds to the shifting cross-strait dynamics, balance of power and now almost fluid “cross-strait status quo.”
The Taiwan Policy Centre monitors all mentions of Taiwan in the UK parliament on the In Westminster section of our Web site. In November, then-shadow foreign secretary David Lammy asked the government what steps had the government taken to help prevent the possibility of conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
This was the reply: “The UK has a clear interest in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. We consider the Taiwan issue one to be settled peacefully by the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait through constructive dialogue, without the threat or use of force or coercion. China’s continued military flights near Taiwan are part of an ongoing pattern of escalatory activity and are not conducive to peace and stability. We do not support any unilateral attempts to change the status quo, including increased Chinese assertiveness toward Taiwan.”
If the first two sentences of the answer came from an FCDO template used for many decades, the later comments showed some promising signs of recognizing that the People’s Republic of China (PRC), not Taiwan, is the source of provocation and tension across the Strait. Nevertheless, the Taiwan Policy Centre feels this does not go far enough. In our report “Respecting Taiwan,” we argued for the UK government to change its approach, updating a policy that has effectively been covered in diplomatic cobwebs since the UK first recognized the PRC in 1950.
We proposed a new statement to signal a more proactive and assertive UK foreign policy toward Taiwan: “The United Kingdom recognizes that Taiwan has a complex historical relationship with its neighbors, which has left a number of unresolved cultural, legal and constitutional legacies. The United Kingdom respects the right of the Taiwanese people under international law to self-determination and believes that the future of Taiwan is a matter for the Taiwanese people alone to decide without bribe, threat or coercion from any other party. The United Kingdom does not rule out providing assistance to Taiwan in the event that it is subject to an attempted invasion or other serious hostile assault. The nature of this assistance will be proportionate to the severity of the threat, and coordinated in conjunction with allied nations in the region. We expect all parties to uphold international law, abide by UNCLOS [UN Convention on the Law of the Sea] and other relevant treaties, and resolutely reject adventurism or the escalation of tensions.”
We now call upon the new foreign secretary, Lammy, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer to recognize that the so-called “status quo” has already been fundamentally altered by the PRC’s daily threatening incursions in Taiwan’s air defense identification zone and the “circling” of the country with military assets.
The PRC’s demand that officials working in Taiwan Representative Offices in Macau and Hong Kong now sign statements recognizing Taiwan as a part of the PRC are one more part of the PRC’s salami slicing of the status quo. It is time for the UK to evolve its position to match the new reality of Taiwan-China relations, bring it in line with international law, show respect and recognition of Taiwanese democracy, self-determination and sovereignty, and show the PRC that UK foreign policy is made in London, not Beijing.
Ben Goren is director of communications for the Taiwan Policy Centre and a long-term resident of Taiwan.
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers
RSS