Trump’s risky favour to Xi Jinping over Taiwan

Yesterday, as is customary in major industrialised democracies, Taiwanese newspapers led with a sports story: the Taiwanese national baseball team will play Japan in the final of the Asian Games in Nagoya on Saturday. A few hours earlier, Taiwan had beaten the Chinese national team 9–1 in the semi-final, a triumph marred only by the usual lack of sportsmanship on the Chinese side: at international events in Taiwan, it is forbidden to compete under one’s own flag, or even under one’s own name; and so when some supporters cheered on the national team using the word ‘Taiwan’ rather than ‘Chinese Taipei’, Games officials intervened, reminding them of the ban on ‘political slogans’. For Beijing, and for all events where its financial clout is on full display, Taiwan must not be mentioned. It is the same rule that leader Xi Jinping reminded US President Donald Trump of yesterday in Washington. 

How Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States actually went remains, in reality, a formal mystery. Trump likely accepted the Chinese rule keeping journalists – with the exception of photojournalists – at a distance without too much resistance, and the White House issued statements only on ceremonial matters, the state dinner menu and the visit to the Smithsonian Asian Art Museum, rather than on the substance of the closed-door talks with the Chinese leader. A few details were leaked to the press via the US Ambassador to Beijing, David Perdue: Trump is said to have asked Xi very clearly to stop aiding Iran – according to US officials, Iran has used imagery obtained from Chinese commercial satellites to identify and strike US bases in the Middle East and US ships – and that there are already concrete signs that the Chinese have heeded his request. The truce in the trade war, which came about following the Trump-Xi agreement last October and had halted much of the escalation, has also been extended until 10 January 2027. The US Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, told CNBC yesterday that Washington and Beijing have reached an agreement on a limited group of products that may be traded on more favourable commercial terms under the Board of Trade mechanism, but the details will not be released until Monday.

In short, to understand what is really going on between the world’s two largest economies and two greatest military powers, one must read between the lines. Chinese statements, however, are more explicit: according to the Chinese press, during the talks Xi Jinping emphasised China’s position on its ‘territorial integrity’, and said that Washington should speak out ‘against “Taiwan’s independence”’ (to date, the US position on the matter has been not to “support” independence, but not to “oppose” it) and to handle the issue “with prudence, in order to lay a solid foundation for Sino-US strategic cooperation and the development of bilateral relations”. In practice, every decision between Trump and Xi Jinping is contingent on Taiwan, the self-governing, democratic and free island that the Chinese Communist Party would like to annex despite never having governed it. Analysts have long emphasised that if the Trump Administration were to accept the change in wording (from ‘does not support’ to ‘opposes’), there could in fact be significant consequences for US strategic ambiguity in the event of a conflict. The problem is that the US president has already described the island as a useful “bargaining chip” in relations with Beijing, including US military support for Taipei: 14 billion in military supplies already approved for sale by Congress remain on hold; Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the day before yesterday that the reason is not political, but because they might be of use to the United States. Japan too – which is very close to Taiwan, and not just geographically – fears that the White House might make trade with China contingent on East Asian security. Yesterday, in a statement, the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry said that Xi’s remarks represent “the usual Chinese approach of distorting the facts and unilaterally setting out its own position and claims”, for example on historical issues as well: the Chinese leader told Trump that the United States and China had ‘fought side by side’ during the Second World War, but the truth is that the People’s Republic of China did not even exist at that time (it was, in fact, the Republic of China – that is, Taiwan – that existed).

However, there is also another worrying scenario, from the perspective of the anti-China hawks within the Trump Administration, concerning the White House’s support for Taiwanese political or interest groups closer to Beijing: according to various analyses, the chairwoman of the Kuomintang party, Cheng Li-wun – who was in Beijing to meet Xi Jinping last April – may seek to appeal to the isolationist factions within the Trump administration who would like to remove Taiwan as an obstacle in negotiations with Beijing and who might hope for a Kuomintang victory to remove that obstacle, represented above all by the Democratic Progressive Party led by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te. In short, a convenient political solution, which to many, however, is reminiscent of the policy of appeasement towards Vladimir Putin following 2014 and the invasion of Crimea: handing Taiwan over to the People’s Republic of China does not mean that the leadership in Beijing will stop there.