Recently, major news media in the US and Europe have been awash with analyses on how the West got China wrong. Prominent publications such as the London-based magazine The Economist (“How the West got China wrong,” March 1) argue that since former US president Richard Nixon’s opening to China, the West had hoped that diplomatic and commercial engagement would bring political and economic openness, but that the gamble has failed.
In their seminal article “The China Reckoning” (Foreign Affairs, March/April), Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner, officials who served in the administration of former US president Barack Obama, write: “Nearly half a century since Nixon’s first steps toward rapprochement, the record is increasingly clear that Washington once again put too much faith in its power to shape China’s trajectory.”
"Neither carrots nor sticks have swayed China as predicted. China has instead pursued its own course, belying a range of US expectations in the process."
In his Washington Post article “We got China wrong, now what?” (Feb. 28), commentator Charles Lane argues that the US needs a long, sober policy rethink, and that it should “reinvest in traditional alliances with democratic nations in the Asia-Pacific region.”
That is where Taiwan comes in: For too long, Taiwan has been a victim of the over-optimism and unwarranted fascination the US and western Europe had with China. In the 1970s it was shunted aside by Nixon and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, as it had to make way for the larger “strategic” interests associated with enhancing relations with China.
Little attention was paid to the fact that Taiwan was under authoritarian rule by the Chinese Nationalists of the Kuomintang. Fortunately for the people of Taiwan, the US Congress pushed through the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which maintained a semblance of unofficial relations.
Then, in the 1980s Taiwan went through its momentous transition to democracy, and in the early 1990s, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) presided over a vibrant democracy.
This new situation should have brought about a fundamental shift of Western policy toward Taiwan, but unfortunately it coincided with the economic rise of China: Tempted by the lure of China’s market, the West remained stuck “engaging” China at the expense of better relations with Taiwan.
China’s new strength brought about a major expansion of its political and military prowess, which it used to push Taiwan further into the corner of diplomatic isolation, while attempting to use economic ties to bring about political rapprochement, particularly during the administration of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
However, this approach was rejected by a Taiwanese populace that increasingly treasured its own unique identity, and valued its new-found freedoms and hard-fought democracy: In local elections in 2014 and national elections in 2016, the Taiwanese overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic Progressive Party, culminating in the 2016 election of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
There is a growing sense that Taiwan’s international isolation should be a thing of the anachronistic past.
Thus, as this much-needed rethink about policy toward China is ongoing, the US and western Europe have an opportunity to get their policy toward Taiwan right, and invest in strengthening relations with a strategic beacon of democracy in the region.
Gerrit van der Wees, a former Dutch diplomat, served as editor of Taiwan Communique from 1980 until 2016. He teaches history of Taiwan at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
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
RSS