America’s policy on Taiwan and China needs to change with the times

Syaru Shirley Lin says the commotion over the Trump-Tsai phone call has exposed the US challenge in forging stable relations with both the vibrant democracy that Taiwan has become and the assertive China of today

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Syaru Shirley Lin

Published: 4:50pm, 6 Dec 2016Updated: 7:27pm, 6 Dec 2016

Eventually, the Trump administration will have to develop a more coherent policy towards Taiwan, which has not been reviewed since the Clinton administration. Illustration: Craig Stephens

On December 2, US President-elect Donald Trump accepted a phone call from President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan to congratulate him on his electoral victory. In his tweets after the call, Trump referred to Tsai as “the President of Taiwan” and wrote that he didn’t see why the US could sell arms to Taiwan but he should not accept a call from Taiwan’s president.

This sent ripples of alarm all over the world, especially among the policy experts in Washington, Beijing and even Taipei. The call threw into question whether long-standing American policy towards Taiwan will now be changed.

In 1979, the US established normal diplomatic relations with China and derecognised Taiwan. The US also “acknowledged the Chinese position” that Taiwan is part of China. That same year, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which allowed for unofficial relations with Taiwan to continue even under the new “One China” policy. Nonetheless, no American president had ever spoken to a Taiwanese president since.

One phone call won’t change US policy on Taiwan – or relations with China

From the start, these arrangements were not seen as a long-term strategy but as a way to preserve stability while encouraging the two sides to reach a resolution, presumably unification. The Shanghai Communiqué jointly issued by the US and China in 1972 during president Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking trip to China was based on the assumption that “Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait maintain that there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China”.