The senior director for East Asian affairs at the US National Security Council (NSC), Dennis Wilder, has said that Taiwan, or the Republic of China (ROC), is not a state in the international community. US State Department officials from the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs have said Wilder's words are consistent with long-term US policy on Taiwan's statehood. This is not new to those who understand a bit about Taiwan's international position. Instead, it serves as a warning to those who believe that only an absolute faith in the legitimacy of the ROC will allow Taiwan to survive in the international community.
Emotions aside, the US government has indeed exposed the "inconvenient truth" regarding the uncertainty surrounding the issue of Taiwan's sovereignty: That the issue is undecided and has been left undecided for years. The dispute between the pan-green and pan-blue camps over Taiwan's statehood is nothing new.
Seemingly ruthless criticism from the US on Taiwan's pursuit of democracy has provided the Taiwanese with a great opportunity to look at our history and to move toward the right future. We should cool down and think about who we really are.
The Treaty of San Francisco that Japan signed with 48 nations in 1951 and the Treaty of Peace between the ROC and Japan in 1952 clearly stated that Taiwan's statehood was left undefined. While many support the idea that Taiwan has a legal relationship with China, the Formosan Association for Public Affairs confirmed -- after verifying with an official at the Records Services at the US National Archives -- that the 1943 Cairo Declaration that several Chinese officials have used as a basis to bolster their "one China" claims is not legally binding.
There is nothing shameful about admitting that Taiwan's international status is undetermined. On the contrary, it gives us a reason to make our nation a "normal country."
With a presidential election approaching, neither the pan-green camp nor the pan-blue camp is willing at this point to face history honestly, because if they admit that Taiwan's sovereignty is uncertain, they also deny the legitimacy of the election. The Taiwanese might be able to understand this conflict for the time being because of Taiwan's special historical background.
However, do the Taiwanese have a right to demand their future leaders to explicitly promise that Taiwan's statehood will still be undefined in five or even 10 years? The pro-independence pan-green camp probably cannot get away with this question.
The US has declared its position on Taiwan's statehood. Even though this has lifted the veil covering an embarrassing truth, it could serve as a turning point for Taiwanese to unify. This hot potato is a test of the intelligence of Taiwanese politicians.
Liu Shun-Ming is a policy planner at the Government Information Office.
Translated by Ted Yang
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017