NEW YORK, Nov. 1 (UPI) — Taiwan may need to act more cautiously in its diplomatic dealings with not only rival China, but also the United States, a U.S. analyst said Tuesday.
Andrew Nathan, a professor of political science at Columbia University, said at an Overseas Press Club of America panel recent interactions between the United States and Taiwan illustrate why Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen needs to act carefully while U.S. President Donald Trump remains in office.
Following his election Trump took a congratulatory phone call from Tsai in 2016, breaking with protocol and angering Beijing.
“The phone call was not good for Taiwan. It didn’t achieve any long-term benefit for Taiwan, it just showed China that Trump was willing to play games with both sides,” Nathan said.
“Trump was willing to use Taiwan to rattle the mainland, then when Xi Jinping refused to take a phone call from Trump until he re-articulated the One-China policy, Trump eventually did because he had a bigger game to play, with North Korea and other issues.”
Beijing’s military and diplomatic pressure against Taiwan has increased significantly since the call, and fluidity in U.S.-China relations does have an impact on Taiwan, analysts said.
Thousands of Taiwanese citizens took part in a recent pro-independence rally, challenging Beijing’s One-China policy that does not recognize Taiwanese sovereignty. The protests do not mean Tsai’s administration is flaunting anti-mainland policies, however.
Russell Hsiao, executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute, said Tsai is being practical despite the tensions.
“I don’t think [her administration] is moving toward greater separateness. As a matter of fact policies undertaken by her administration have been recognized pretty widely among analysts, that they have been pragmatic, measured,” Hsiao said.
Potential consequences of not maintaining the status quo in cross-strait relations may be driving Tsai’s policies.
“China has a lot of things they can do before they’re firing weapons,” Nathan said, referring to the dwindling number of Taiwan’s diplomatic partners, as more countries normalize relations with Beijing. “They have a tremendous number of economic levers they can exercise over Taiwan…Tsai is trying to stay afloat over there, economically, diplomatically.”
The Taiwanese leader, the head of a liberal democracy of 23 million people, has a tough job because of its powerful neighbor, currently under the rule of President Xi Jinping.
Richard Bernstein, a former correspondent for Time magazine in China, said Xi’s goal of making the world safe for authoritarianism is putting it in conflict with the United States.
“One of the things Xi Jinping has done is make a famous ‘Document 9,’ which makes advocacy of the very values we Americans most cherish as practically criminal offenses,” Bernstein said.
The communiqué issued in 2013 warned against promoting the “West’s view of media” and urged the Chinese Communist Party to resist “infiltration” of outside ideas.
The recent past illustrates the limits that face U.S.-China relations, and Trump’s disparagement of Beijing could be rooted in contemporary history.
“U.S.-China relations have been due for a course correction for a very long time,” Hsiao said. “I think this is because of a misled assumption by many in the foreign policy community integration of China into the international order, bringing it into the World Trade Organization, other international institutions would somehow modify its behavior.
“Nearly 20 years down the road now, we have clearly seen that that verdict has not been the case.”
Hsiao added China is manipulating the rules of international institutions.
Nathan said the perception of China as threat has not been met with satisfying solutions among U.S. policymakers.
Neither is the current policy of escalating a tariff war, or making moves to “contain” China, helping to ease tensions.
“American strategy is very unstable in many respects,” Nathan said. “The Philippines, they’ve recalculated, Trump has done a lot to destabilize the U.S.-Japan alliance.”
Nathan also said the trade deficit is something that cannot be fixed.
“The tariffs don’t solve anything.”
