Tue, May 26, 2026 page8

• China unleashes a war of words

  • By Marcin Jerzewski
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  The summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) did not formally change US policy toward Taiwan.

  The less reassuring part is that Trump’s rhetoric gave Beijing something it values greatly: the sound of a US president echoing parts of China’s preferred vocabulary on Taiwan.

  That is why the summit should be understood not only through arms sales, tariffs or leader-level diplomacy, but also through discourse power.

  In Chinese political usage, discourse power, or huayu quan (話語權), refers to Beijing’s ability to shape the terms through which others understand contested issues. It is the effort to normalize China’s definitions and make its claims sound reasonable and unavoidable. In practical terms, Beijing wants others to argue about Taiwan using China’s words.

  For Taiwan, this matters because Beijing’s external messaging is never only external. Much of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) outrage over “Taiwanese independence” is also aimed at a domestic audience.

  Taiwan has become deeply embedded in the CCP’s legitimacy narrative, especially through the language of national rejuvenation, which makes compromise politically costly. Absorbing Taiwan into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is framed as proof that the party has restored China’s historical greatness.

  Understanding the discourse around the Trump-Xi summit matters because Trump’s comments appeared to validate part of that narrative: not Beijing’s legal claim over Taiwan, but its preferred framing that Taiwan’s democratic self-defense is the source of instability.

  In a Fox News interview after meeting Xi, Trump said he was “not looking to have somebody go independent,” referred to the US having to “travel 9,500 miles [15,290km] to fight a war,” and said he wanted both China and Taiwan to “cool down.” He also declined to commit clearly to a pending arms package for Taiwan.

  That formulation is misleading. Taiwan under President William Lai (賴清德) is not preparing a formal declaration of independence.

  Lai’s response was explicit: Defending the “status quo” of the Republic of China (ROC) does not involve any “Taiwanese independence” problem. The ROC is a sovereign democratic country; the ROC and the PRC are not subordinate to each other; and Taiwan’s future must follow the will of its people.

  Beijing rejects this formulation and presents it as separatism. However, it is still not the same as a plan to declare a Republic of Taiwan. That distinction matters: Preserving Taiwan’s democratic reality is not initiating a legal rupture.

  Indeed, Taiwan’s two main parties are “status quo” parties, even if they differ over the trajectory of political development under that “status quo.”

  The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) focuses on derisking through diversification, while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) seeks an equilibrium between defense and dialogue. Neither mainstream camp is proposing to surrender Taiwan’s democratic agency to Beijing.

  Trump’s warning did not describe Taiwan’s policy. It entered China’s frame.

  This does not mean Washington has formally changed course. After the summit, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC News that US policy on Taiwan was unchanged. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated that China’s military coercion is the only source of regional instability.

  There is no need to manufacture a policy rupture. However, precision matters.

  Washington recognizes Beijing as the sole legal government of China, does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state, takes no position on Taiwan’s ultimate sovereignty, supports Taiwan’s self-defense under the Taiwan Relations Act and opposes unilateral changes to the “status quo” by force or coercion.

  This difficult balance depends on careful language. Trump’s comments blurred it in two ways.

  First, by suggesting that Taiwan is “going independent,” he shifted attention away from Chinese coercion and toward Taiwan’s supposed provocation. Second, by wavering on arms sales and describing them in transactional terms, he made Taiwan’s defense needs look like bargaining material.

  That impression is harmful even if the policy has not changed.

  Beijing does not need Washington to formally abandon Taiwan to score a discourse-power victory.

  It only needs enough ambiguity to feed US skepticism inside Taiwan.

  The message is simple: Washington is unreliable, Taiwan is only a bargaining chip, and resistance to China is dangerous because the US might not show up in a crisis.

  Reports after the summit noted that Chinese state-run outlets presented Trump’s comments as a blow to the DPP and as a warning to Taiwan’s “separatist forces.”

  That is how discourse power works: an ambiguous remark by a foreign leader is turned into political material for Beijing’s preferred story.

  Trump’s remarks created precisely the kind of ambiguity that Beijing and Taiwan’s US-skeptic voices have historically been able to exploit.

  The lesson from the summit is not panic. It is clarity.

  To this end, Taiwan should continue strengthening its defense, diversifying partnerships, and explaining its position internationally:

  It is defending an existing democratic “status quo,” not manufacturing a crisis.

  For Washington, clarity means approving arms sales based on Taiwan’s defense needs, not Beijing’s comfort.

  It also means avoiding language that implies Taiwan is the problem, or that its security can be negotiated with the power threatening it.

  For Europe, clarity begins in the discursive realm: The problem is not Taiwan defending its democratic “status quo”; the problem is China threatening to destroy it.

  Taiwan’s existence and defense of the democratic “status quo” are not the provocation.

  The issue is that Beijing is deploying its discourse power to make that “status quo” look like a provocation.

  Marcin Jerzewski is head of the Taiwan office of the European Values Center for Security Policy and a fellow at Visegrad Insight.
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