Only the U.S. Can Sustain the Peace in Taiwan

Recent weeks have seen significant developments in the awkward three-way relationship between Taiwan, China and the U.S. First, President Donald Trump signed the Taiwan Travel Act, which made it American policy to encourage greater high-level contacts — including defense and national security ones — with Taiwan, despite the displeasure those contacts will surely incur from China. Second, Taiwan’s spy chief warned that a more empowered and assertive Chinese government, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, is now relying on “more sharp-elbow rhetoric and tactics” to deal with an island it considers a renegade province. North Korea and the South China Sea may be the Asian hot spots getting the most attention today. But the waters are getting choppy in the Taiwan Strait, as tensions rise and the threat of crisis grows.

Hostility between Taiwan and the mainland dates back to 1949, when the remnants of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist regime took refuge on the island after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists. For more than two decades, the U.S. protected Taiwan and recognized Chiang’s government as the sole representative of China before shifting its allegiances and diplomatic recognition to Mao’s regime in the 1970s. Since then, Taiwan has continued to exercise de facto sovereignty but not de jure independence, and all but a small number of countries have transferred diplomatic recognition to Beijing. The U.S. has pursued an equally ambiguous policy of not recognizing Taipei diplomatically but selling it weapons for self-defense. It has also pledged — albeit in very hedged and murky terms — to prevent China from using force to bring Taiwan to heel.