East Asia News & Politics Thread: China, South Korea, Japan...

“Taiwan is like two feet from China,” Trump was quoted as saying to an unnamed Republican senator in 2019, according to the book by Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin. “We are eight thousand miles away. If they invade, there isn’t a fucking thing we can do about it.”

The book, “Chaos Under Heaven,” focuses on Trump’s dealings with China over his four years in the White House. It was released Tuesday and excerpted in the Daily Beast on Monday.

The book suggests that Trump was uninterested in assuring his allies in Taiwan that the U.S. would come to its defense should it come under attack, an attitude that contrasts with how the former president is perceived in the self-ruled island.

The comment, if turned into policy, could have had far-reaching consequences for the Asian democracy. The ruling Communist Party of China claims Taiwan as part of its own territories and has threatened taking it back by force if it formally declares independence. Fears of war have grown as Beijing has become more powerful and assertive overseas. Washington’s commitment to help the island defend itself is seen as the most important deterrent, although there is also fear that any direct confrontation between the Chinese and U.S. militaries could escalate into a much broader conflict.

After Trump was elected president in 2016, his team made a series of moves that demonstrated U.S. support for Taiwan. As president-elect, Trump took a congratulatory call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, the first contact between a Taiwan leader and an incumbent or incoming U.S. president in nearly four decades.

His administration also increased arms sales to Taiwan, sent high-ranked officials to visit the island and, during its last days in office, lifted restrictions on the official interactions between Washington and Taipei.

But behind the scenes, Trump seemed far less interested in supporting Taiwan at the expense of angering China. Rogin’s book described confrontations between Trump and members of his administration in Taiwan policies. In many cases, Trump took China’s side.

According to the book, Trump took the call from President Tsai without being aware of its significance, and later promised Xi Jinping he would accept no more such phone calls.

For example, Trump got furious after a deputy assistant secretary of state, Alex Wong, visited Taipei and angered Beijing. Trump screamed, “Who the fuck is Alex Wong” and asked to “get him out of there,” according to the book. It also quoted then national security adviser John Bolton as saying in 2019, “Trump once told me, I never want to hear from you about Taiwan, Hong Kong, or the Uyghurs.”

Taiwan and Hong Kong were the most pro-Trump places in Asia ahead of the 2020 presidential election, according to a YouGov poll. Many people in Taiwan have credited Trump for the stronger U.S.-Taiwan relations. Some democracy activists in Hong Kong also hoped that Trump could advance their cause.

Lev Nachman, a visiting scholar at National Taiwan University, said Trump’s unfriendly comments on Taiwan suggested that most of the pro-Taiwan policies came from his foreign policy team instead of the president himself.

“There are so many examples of a disconnect between what Trump says and the perception of Trump as a harsh-on-China kind of person,” Nachman said. “It’s not that Trump was a pro-Taiwan or pro-Hong Kong president, it’s that he had people in his administration who were pro-Taiwan and pro-Hong Kong.”

Trump’s indifference came as no surprise, Nachman said, given the former president had on multiple occasions endorsed Xi Jinping’s controversial policies, before he started blaming China for the COVID-19 epidemic.

Trump said he called Xi a “king” on his first visit to Beijing. He said Xi acted “very responsibly” in the early months of Hong Kong’s 2019 protest movement, even though authorities refused popular demands and cracked down on the protests with heavy policing.

According to John Bolton’s 2020 memoir, Trump refused to issue a statement on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown in 2019, saying “who cares about it?” At a G20 meeting the same year, Trump told Xi he should go ahead with building internment camps in Xinjiang, since Trump thought it was “exactly the right thing to do,” Bolton wrote. The Trump administration would later label China’s actions in the western region an act of genocide, a designation that the Biden administration has continued to use.

Nachman said the Trump administration ended up boosting its ties with Taipei, likely thanks to the foreign policy officials who supported a tough policy on China. The bipartisan commitment to Taiwan will likely continue under Joe Biden’s presidency.

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday (March 10) referred to Taiwan as a country, a label usually avoided by his predecessors.

At the tail end of a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the Biden administration's foreign policy agenda, Representative Young Kim (R-CA) noted that Taiwan has served for decades as an "invaluable security and global health partner to the United States." She pointed out that given Taiwan's contributions to the international community and its "strong democratic system," it has earned "a seat at the table like the WHO to share its expertise."

Kim then called on the Biden administration to include Taiwan in the upcoming Democracy Summit and to commence talks with it on a free trade agreement. Blinken responded that he is "absolutely committed" to her suggestions and that he shares her view that "Taiwan is a strong democracy" and "a very strong technological power."

He went on to say that Taiwan is "a country that can contribute to the world, not just its own people. COVID is a very good example of that." Young agreed with the diplomat's remarks.

Blinken's use of the term "country" could mark a new stage in Taiwan-US relations. Since the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan under the Carter administration in 1979, the State Department self-imposed increasing layers of restrictions on official interactions with Taiwan for fear of agitating China.

However, toward the end of his term as secretary of state, Mike Pompeo reevaluated these restrictions, recalling to CNA in a March 9 interview that, "We started staring at them and realized it was just crazy. We had this completely separate set of rules that made no sense." He said that after a full review, "it made sense for us to have more conversations, not fewer. To have more open conversations, not more clandestine conversations."

On Jan. 10, the State Department officially lifted its restrictions on official contact with Taiwan. Among those were prohibitions on using the terms "country" or "government" when referring to Taiwan.

By using the word "country," Blinken appears to have acknowledged the lifting of restrictions. However, only time will tell whether this was a slip of the tongue or a nod to a long-term policy.

Taiwanese Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng confirmed on Tuesday that Washington had approved export permits – including the first arms sales to the island under the Biden administration.

“On the delivery period, we need to follow the procedures in due course and I can’t say when exactly they will arrive. After all, there are operational procedures,” Chiu said ahead of a legislative session, adding that the authorities would ensure the work was completed on schedule.

Chiu did not identify the items to be fitted, but ministry officials had said there were three major types of equipment – digital sonar systems, integrated combat systems and auxiliary equipment system (periscopes) – that the island could not produce and must rely on US technology.

The indigenous submarine project was initiated by the government in 2016 to bolster the island’s ageing fleet of four submarines with eight new diesel-electric models. The first prototype is budgeted to cost NT$49.4 billion (US$1.7 billion) and scheduled to be launched in July 2024 before entering service the following year.

Work on a prototype vessel started at the CSBC Corporation’s shipyard in Kaohsiung, in November.

The approval came just ahead of a meeting this week by senior officials from Washington and Beijing.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to meet mainland officials including China’s foreign policy chief Yang Jiechi on Thursday during a stop in Alaska, according to the State Department. It will be the first high-level in-person contact between the US and mainland China under the Biden administration.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will join the meeting in Anchorage as will Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The meeting will follow Blinken’s first overseas trip to Japan and South Korea, key US allies.

A military source said the Trump administration had approved export permits for the digital sonar and integrated combat systems in December and January, while the Biden administration approved the export of the periscope system last month.

Chiu declined to comment on whether the exports were a sign of closer relations between the US and Taiwan and whether Joe Biden shared Donald Trump’s commitment to defending the island.

Taiwan’s relations with the US – which switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei in 1979 – improved sharply under Trump, who adopted a confrontational policy towards the Chinese mainland.

Washington used to be cautious about supplying sophisticated military technology to Taiwan for fear it would be acquired by Beijing. But before Trump stepped down in January, he approved more than US$18 billion worth of arms sales for Taiwan, including some sophisticated items.

Chieh Chung, a professor of international relations and strategic studies at Tamkang University in Taipei, said the submarine project had the support of the US.

“The Trump [administration] had already approved the export permits for two types of key equipment before he stepped down and as the two sides have a consensus on the sub construction it is left to the Biden [administration] to complete the remaining procedure to give the green light for the last item,” Chieh said.

He said that regardless of whether Trump or Biden was in charge, the US saw the mainland as a key competitor and had asked its allies, especially those near China, to strengthen their defensive capabilities to reduce the burden on the US in the Asia-Pacific region.

“This is why the US is willing to supply those key technologies to support Taiwan’s sub project,” Chieh said, adding Washington also stood to profit from arms sales to the island.

Beijing, which considers Taiwan part of its territory that must be returned to its control – by force – if necessary, has repeatedly warned the US not to cross the red line on Taiwan, including supplying weapons and having official contacts.