The attention of Taiwanese pundits and politicians last week was laser-focused on the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Thursday in South Korea. The question on everyone’s lips was whether Xi would bring up the issue of Taiwan, and whether Trump would sell Taiwan out to improve the chances of securing favorable terms in the discussion over trade tensions.
The attention was born of a paranoia that Trump would live up to his transactional reputation to Taiwan’s detriment. As it turns out, the meeting between the leaders of the two largest economies in the world remained focused on trade, with the US and China achieving little more than a reset that nevertheless signaled a willingness to reduce tensions.
Taiwan was — according to reports — not even mentioned, but speculation over its inclusion distracted from the larger picture of the past week’s diplomatic flurry.
For Taiwan, the important thing was not the Trump-Xi meeting in isolation, but what was learned from it in the larger context of Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Tokyo prior to his arrival in South Korea, the meeting between Xi and Takaichi on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, on Friday, and the meeting between Takaichi and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung on Thursday.
The reset in the Trump-Xi meeting shows that, for all his attempts to subvert the international order, Xi is well aware of the degree to which China’s economy is intertwined with the US economy, and also how important it is for him to steady his ship to address his country’s domestic economic woes; it also shows that Trump was aware of the same realities for the US. For Taiwan, the noteworthy aspect was that Xi knows that China’s continued economic health remains dangerously exposed to punitive sanctions by the US.
The meeting between Trump and Takaichi, a political prodigy of late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, sent a strong message about the resilience of the US-Japan alliance and the importance both leaders placed on national security, defense spending, a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
Takaichi also noted that Japan faces an “unprecedented, severe security environment,” which could be interpreted as referring to Chinese actions in the region. In her meeting with Xi, she expressed serious concerns about the South China Sea and brought up the issue of Chinese actions in the East China Sea around the Japanese-administered Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台列嶼), known in Japan as the Senkaku Islands.
Her policy trajectory as a continuation of Abe’s national security concerns, as well as her affinity with Taiwan, reassured Taipei.
Also of importance to Taiwan, in terms of the network of like-minded alliances in the region, was the cordial meeting between Takaichi and Lee, during which the two leaders agreed to develop Japan-South Korea relations “in a future-oriented and stable manner, based on the foundation built since the normalization of diplomatic ties,” according to Takaichi.
This was good news indeed, as Lee has been resistant to a warming of ties between the two nations after years of acrimony eased following overtures in 2023 between then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida and then-South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol.
Any concerns that improving ties would not survive the end of the administrations of Kishida and Yoon, and the impact such deterioration would have on the US-Japan-South Korea alignment, can be put to bed for the time being, as there now seems to be some institutionalization of the relationship.
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