AMONG THE four traditional geopolitical flash points in East Asia—the Korean Peninsula, the South and East China Seas, and the Taiwan Strait—cross-Strait relations between China and Taiwan have been the least likely to generate troubling headlines in recent years. This changed in early December, when President-elect Donald Trump made the controversial decision to take a congratulatory phone call from President Tsai Ing-wen—the first official interaction between a U.S. president or president-elect and Taiwan’s leader since the abrogation of formal ties between both countries in 1979. In an interview shortly afterwards, Trump appeared to question Washington’s future commitment to the “one-China” policy that had guided the U.S. approach to cross-Strait relations for nearly four decades. Trump’s actions sparked a furious reaction from Beijing and set in motion a string of provocative Chinese moves that thrust the frozen conflict over Taiwan back into the international limelight.

But at the time of Trump’s intervention, relations between Beijing and Taipei were already rapidly deteriorating, with the fragile status quo that hitherto sustained them now fraying. The renewal of cross-Strait tensions was triggered by last year’s general election in Taiwan, which swept the Beijing-critical Democratic People’s Party (DPP) into power, whose leader Tsai Ing-wen was inaugurated as the island’s first female president in May. Tsai’s landslide defeat of the pro-Chinese Nationalist Party Kuomintang (KMT) marked the end of an era spanning nearly seven decades in which the KMT, with its coalition partners, had not once lost its majority in Taiwan’s parliament.

During the period of KMT preponderance under Tsai’s predecessor, former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, relations between Taipei and Beijing had been tranquil. A champion of integration and eventual unification with the mainland, Ma initiated a policy of continuous improvement of relations with Beijing. During his eight-year tenure, the two sides signed twenty-three cooperation agreements on issues such as trade, transit, aviation, tourism, joint crime fighting and judicial assistance. Considering how limited the interaction between Beijing and Taipei had been in the past, their rapprochement during the Ma presidency proceeded at an astonishing pace. Few things illustrate this better than the upsurge in people-to-people exchanges: Whereas prior to 2008 there were no regular direct flights operating between China and Taiwan, their number rapidly soared to nearly nine hundred scheduled commercial flights a week. More than four million Chinese visited Taiwan in 2015 alone, while approximately one million Taiwanese are now living on the mainland. These unprecedented developments culminated in a historic meeting between Ma Ying-jeou and China’s President Xi Jinping in November 2015, the first ever personal encounter of the Chinese and Taiwanese leaders since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

The “new normalcy” in bilateral relations brought on by Ma’s course of rapprochement with Beijing mitigated cross-Strait tensions and yielded a substantial “peace dividend” for businesses on both sides of the strait. But even if the KMT had not suffered a historic defeat in the 2016 elections, the long-term viability of these policies would have been doubtful. Opposition against Ma’s Beijing-friendly course had long been mounting in Taiwan. The policy of rapprochement masked the fact that both sides of the strait have been drifting further and further away from each other. Opinion polls have shown that the vast majority of Taiwanese support an improved dialogue with Beijing and the maintenance of the status quo in cross-Strait relations, but the proportion of those backing the idea of reunification with the mainland has long been dwindling. Around 60 percent of the people (and an even higher proportion among the younger generation) now regard themselves as “Taiwanese,” with only a third identifying as “both Chinese and Taiwanese.” In 1992, the number of those identifying themselves as Taiwanese had still been less than 18 percent.

This decisive shift in self-identification is a fairly new development. It found a particularly stark expression in the Sunflower Movement, a student movement that was formed in March 2014 to protest against the planned ratification of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement. This comprehensive association treaty with Beijing would have opened up sensitive industries such as banking, healthcare, or telecommunications to Chinese investment, leading to an unprecedented degree of economic integration with the mainland. The Ma government tried to pressure the parliament into ratifying the agreement, avoiding public debate and communication with the affected actors and industries. But the vehement student protest movement, which proceeded to occupy the chamber of the Taiwanese parliament for twenty-four days, succeeded in stalling the agreement indefinitely. The Sunflower Movement, which at one point saw as many as half a million people take to the street, petered out, having achieved most of its immediate goals. But the potential for further mass protests has remained strong, as was illustrated in July 2015, when hundreds of students stormed Taiwan’s Ministry of Education in response to a proposed revision of the national school curriculum, which they claimed was aimed at promoting a pro-Beijing stance and the one-China principle.

Taiwan’s vibrant and assertive civil society stands in marked contrast to recent political developments in mainland China. Since Xi Jinping became China’s president in 2013, he has centralized power in a manner unseen for decades, including a distinct reideologization of Chinese politics and a tightening of repressive measures. China’s neoauthoritarian policymaking streak has widened the political gulf between Taiwan and the mainland even further, and it makes it particularly difficult for Beijing to come to terms with the kinds of policies represented by the DPP. Public disenchantment in Taiwan about a closer association with the mainland—especially among the younger generation—has been strongly reinforced by Beijing’s erosion of civil and political rights in neighboring Hong Kong. The Chinese leadership’s uncompromising reaction to the 2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong (which maintained close contacts with Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement) and its recent ousting of elected parliamentarians from the city’s legislative council have magnified the political impasse that Hong Kong now finds itself in, demonstrating how little genuine progress there has been in implementing the principle of “one country, two systems” in practice. Considering that one country, two systems can be understood as Beijing’s proposed template for the (re)integration of Taiwan, the situation in Hong Kong has made the prospect of eventual unification with China even less palatable for large parts of the Taiwanese public.

But the primary source of discontent for Taiwanese voters has been the state of Taiwan’s ailing economy, which entered a recession in the second half of 2015 and grew by little more than 1 percent in 2016. Exports have languished, wages have stagnated for years, real income has declined, and social inequality has deteriorated. Considering that the prospects of the economy are intimately tied up with the state of cross-Strait relations—China and Hong Kong account for roughly 30 percent of Taiwan’s trade, 38 percent of its exports, and more than two-thirds of its total foreign investments—most of the Taiwanese public would be unlikely to endorse a policy of increasing antagonism towards the mainland. At the same time, however, cross-Strait economic relations have now lost much of their luster for the Taiwanese. Not only have polls shown that a majority of Taiwanese are worried about the potential consequences of deepening economic dependence on Beijing. The business environment for Taiwanese investors and producers in the PRC—who are estimated to have invested between $60 and $200 billion in mainland China—has been deteriorating in recent years. Taiwanese entrepreneurs are increasingly irked by China’s rising labor costs, the problems associated with environmental pollution, and the persistent bureaucratic hurdles erected by China’s central and regional governments. In addition, due to the technological upgrading and growing sophistication of China’s own manufacturing sector, many Chinese companies that used to form the supply lines of Taiwanese manufacturers have begun to engage in cut-throat competition with them. In light of the growing complications that Taiwanese businesses have been facing in China, they have begun to shift many of their production sites to South and Southeast Asia. Between 2001 and 2015, Taiwan’s trade with Southeast Asia increased from around $30 billion to almost $80 billion, and Taiwanese companies’ foreign direct investment into the six largest Southeast Asian economies doubled in the past five years. The DPP has actively endorsed this strategy of diversifying trade and investment away from China, and has pushed for a “Go South” economic policy of bolstering alternative trade ties with South and Southeast Asian countries. One of Tsai’s first acts as president was to establish a designated office to coordinate this “New Southbound Policy,” and her government has begun to launch trade offices in the states of the region and to offer credit lines to businesses investing there.

 

FOLLOWING TSAI’S inauguration as president of Taiwan, cross-Strait relations between Beijing and Taipei swiftly deteriorated. Although Tsai had previously served as a cabinet member during the presidency of Chen Shui-bian (2000–2008), a fierce critic of Beijing, she was generally regarded as a highly pragmatic politician capable of doing business with the Chinese leadership. It was during her tenure as Minister of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council—the highest body coordinating relations with Beijing—that the “Little Three Links” were arranged in 2001 that provided the first trade, transportation and postal connections between Taiwan and the mainland. Throughout the election campaign and prior to her inauguration, Tsai had refrained from taking a clear position on the future of cross-Strait relations, but she had repeatedly expressed the desire to maintain the status quo.

From the onset, however, Beijing proved unwilling to accept such an ambiguous stance. Xi Jinping put Tsai on the spot by explicitly demanding that she clarify her position on cross-Strait relations by declaring adherence to the so-called 1992 Consensus—an understanding reached between two agencies affiliated with the Chinese and Taiwanese governments in November 1992 that expressed a mutual commitment to the one-China principle. The 1992 Consensus has never been recognized as official policy by either government, and the DPP leadership has repeatedly contested its validity in the past. Tsai herself had on earlier occasions claimed that the 1992 Consensus “does not exist,” but during the election campaign and since she was elected president she has studiously avoided taking a clear stance on this subject. In her long-awaited inaugural address on May 20, 2016, Tsai merely stated that she “respects” the 1992 meetings as a “historical fact,” while continuously referring to Taiwan as a “country” (she has since, on another occasion, described Taiwan as “a sovereign, independent country”).

Chinese officials and state media responded harshly to Tsai’s inauguration speech, referring to it as an “incomplete exam paper” and demanding that “Taiwan’s new leadership must complete their currently incomplete response” on the 1992 Consensus, but Tsai has repeatedly refused to alter her stance on the issue. Within a month of her inauguration, the Taiwan Affairs Bureau—Beijing’s primary authority devoted to relations with Taipei—announced that it had suspended the official cross-Strait communication mechanism that provided for regular contact between the two governments, due to Tsai’s refusal to recognize the one-China principle enshrined in the 1992 Consensus. To date, all formal bilateral contacts between China and Taiwan remain suspended, with even Track II dialogue forums ruled out by Beijing.

Most analysts of cross-Strait relations have so far assumed that the Chinese leadership will refrain from making overly provocative and threatening moves absent a substantial policy change in Taipei in the direction of de jure Taiwanese independence. There have been signs, however, that Xi Jinping and his government are no longer satisfied with simply maintaining the status quo of cross-Strait relations indefinitely. Since he became China’s president in 2013, Xi has introduced various changes into cross-Strait policy, most notably pushing Taiwan to conclude the comprehensive trade agreements that triggered the public backlash of the Sunflower Movement. Xi appears to have become impatient about reintegrating Taiwan. In October 2013, he had already stated that the underlying cross-Strait political differences “cannot be passed down from generation to generation,” which was widely interpreted as an indication that he would want to pursue concrete steps towards unification during his tenure. China’s new military strategy, published in May 2015, addresses the Taiwan issue by declaring, “Reunification is an inevitable trend in the course of national rejuvenation.”

These and other official proclamations indicate that Xi regards reunification not as an abstract, remote goal for the distant future, but a more proximate objective that cannot be postponed indefinitely. Xi’s apparent impatience on the issue of unification stands in stark contrast to the vocal resistance to this idea among the vast majority of Taiwanese, particularly the younger generation. A nationwide opinion poll conducted in late May 2016 found that two-thirds of those polled in Taiwan—and more than 80 percent of respondents in the 20–29 age bracket—opposed the prospect of an eventual unification with China, while only 18.5 percent were in favor. The Chinese government is clearly conscious of the need to sway the Taiwanese public in its favor, as evidenced by Xi’s willingness to organize the historic meeting with Ma in November of 2015. The summit meeting was meant to boost Ma’s flagging KMT in the polls, but it ended up drawing a very ambivalent reaction from the Taiwanese public.

 

WITH THE prospects of improved cross-Strait ties appearing more distant than ever in the wake of the DPP’s electoral victory, Beijing began to tighten the screws on Taiwan and on Tsai Ing-wen’s administration long before Donald Trump picked up the phone in early December to embark on an apparent realignment of Washington’s Taiwan policy. Ever since the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, in 1995–96, the balance of power between both sides of the strait has shifted dramatically in favor of Beijing. Twenty years ago, the Chinese economy was three and a half times bigger than Taiwan’s—today, by contrast, Taiwan’s GDP is less than 5 percent the size of China’s. In terms of military strength, the balance sheet looks even bleaker for Taipei. Beijing now has a large and growing range of levers available to apply crippling pressure on Taipei. Following Tsai’s election victory, it began to subtly undermine Taiwan in the international arena.

On the lowest rung in Beijing’s catalogue of punitive measures is the ability to create a more challenging diplomatic environment for Taipei and to further curtail its access to important international forums and agreements. By early 2016, the number of states that maintain official diplomatic relations with Taiwan had gradually dwindled to a mere twenty-two—each of them small and susceptible to Beijing’s economic pressure. In March, China officially resumed diplomatic relations with Gambia, which had formally recognized Taiwan until 2013, when it chose to break off relations with Taipei. As part of a tacit agreement with the Ma administration, Beijing had initially refused to establish formal ties of its own with the West African nation despite Gambia’s diplomatic overtures. But with Ma gone, the Chinese leadership no longer felt bound by the agreement. In late December, Beijing poached another one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, as São Tomé and Príncipe chose to sever ties with Taipei. China’s attrition of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies is likely to continue, with several Central American countries and the Vatican seen as likely candidates for hostile takeovers in the near future.

China has also used its influence to prevent Taiwan from being invited to important international gatherings—a particularly problematic scenario at a time when Taipei is keen to take part in regional integration projects and is trying to conclude free-trade agreements with a number of countries that do not formally recognize it (at present, Taiwan only has such agreements with Singapore and New Zealand). Beijing angered Taipei in early May, when a senior Chinese official cast doubt on Taiwan’s prospects of retaining its observer status at the World Health Organization if cross-Strait relations were to deteriorate further. Previously, in April, a Taiwanese delegation was forced to leave a meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Steel Committee in Brussels following Chinese official complaints—the first such incident since Taiwan joined the committee as an observer in 2005. More recently, Chinese pressure prevented the International Civil Aviation Organization from inviting Taiwan to its annual assembly, which it had been able to attend in previous years, and Taiwan was also barred from sending an official delegation to the UN climate-change conference, as it had in 2015. Additional sovereignty concerns arose in Taiwan when Beijing pressured several countries, including Kenya, Malaysia, Cambodia and Armenia, to deport dozens of Taiwanese passport holders suspected of being members of telecoms fraud schemes to mainland China, ignoring Taipei’s efforts to have them repatriated to Taiwan. These moves were condemned by Taiwan’s parliament as having “seriously infringed upon . . . the nation’s sovereignty.”

Beyond these diplomatic pressure points, China—which is Taiwan’s largest trading partner—can resort to a multitude of economic levers to apply further pressure on Taipei. One of the first steps Beijing took in reaction to Tsai’s election victory was to impose restrictions on the number of Chinese tourists allowed to travel to Taiwan—a measure of both symbolic and economic significance. Tourism accounts for approximately 4–5 percent of Taiwan’s GDP, and residents of mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau make up more than half of all visitors to the island. Prior to 2008, no more than three hundred thousand mainland Chinese visited Taiwan every year, but since then their number has rapidly surged to about four million per year, in addition to 1.5 million visitors from Hong Kong and Macau. The newly imposed restrictions, however, have caused the number of Taiwan-bound mainland Chinese tourists to drop by nearly 30 percent, and Beijing announced that their number would be further reduced to less than 2 million per year. The economic cost of a suspension of tourist visits from the mainland is a substantial but tolerable burden for Taiwan—although it has already stirred up political resistance, as thousands of workers in the island’s tourism industry took to the streets in September to protest against Tsai’s policies. A much more potent weapon in Beijing’s arsenal would be to impose restrictions on Taiwanese business activity in China, considering that key sectors of Taiwanese manufacturing (such as microchip production) are heavily reliant on the mainland. While China’s own economy would suffer from such measures—Taiwan is currently the mainland’s seventh-largest trading partner—Beijing would find it far easier than Taipei to stomach the cost of such a move.

In the context of a potential heightening of China’s economic pressure on Taiwan, one of the DPP’s core election promises—energy reform, including a commitment to phase out nuclear power by 2025—raises questions about the future of the island’s strategic energy security. To date, the DPP has said relatively little about how it plans to replace the energy volumes lost when the nuclear power stations are decommissioned. The proposals made so far include a fivefold growth of renewables (with a focus on the large-scale development of offshore wind farms in the contested Taiwan Strait), a push to increase energy efficiency, a reduction of the power reserves ratio, and a focus on developing a smart grid, which is a prerequisite for the efficient use of renewable energy on a large scale. Besides the likelihood that a potential deficit in indigenous energy generation will have to be compensated by additional external energy supplies along vulnerable sea routes, the reliance on smart grids could also increase the exposure of Taiwan’s critical energy infrastructure to Chinese cyberattacks. At present, Taiwan is already the most frequent target of Chinese cyberattacks, not least since it is considered a “test bed” for subsequent cyber campaigns against targets in the United States.

 

THE MOST drastic measure that Beijing could take against Taiwan if relations with the DPP-led government were to deteriorate beyond recovery is the employment of military force. For now, a military escalation is a remote scenario, and Beijing would doubtless ponder it only as an absolute last resort. But it is not an altogether inconceivable step, considering China’s conduct in previous crises in the Taiwan Strait (including its threat, during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1995–96, to turn the strait into a “sea of fire”) and its increasing willingness to employ means of military coercion in disputes with other regional powers. Beijing’s overall posture vis-à-vis Taipei remained threatening even during the presidency of Ma Ying-jeou, as was underscored by reports in 2015 that a mock-up of the inner city of Taipei, including a replica of Taiwan’s Presidential Office Building, was used as an urban warfare training ground for PLA soldiers on a Chinese military base. Beijing has solemnly declared that it would respond with military force to any official Taiwanese pronouncement of independence—which continues to be stipulated as an explicit long-term goal in the DPP’s charter. A few days after the DPP’s triumph in the 2016 elections, China’s state-owned television broadcast reports about Chinese live-fire military exercises and landing drills off the coast of Fujian province, directly across from Taiwan, which was interpreted as a clear warning for the DPP.

Following the Taiwan phone call and Trump’s potential willingness to abandon the one-China principle, the prospect of a military confrontation in the Taiwan Strait now appears less remote. Since early December, China has substantially stepped up its military activities around Taiwan. Chinese military aircraft have repeatedly circled the international airspace surrounding Taiwan within visible range of the island, and a group of warships, including China’s sole aircraft carrier, passed some ninety nautical miles south of it. China’s armed forces are reportedly “considering strong measures” to deter the island from moving further out of Beijing’s grasp, and the Communist Party–owned daily Global Times published an op-ed declaring that “the military status quo across the Taiwan Straits needs to be reshaped” and advising Beijing to get “ready to achieve reunification through the use of force.”

The potential for armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait depends in no small part on developments in other geopolitical hot spots in the region, particularly the South China Sea. Beijing’s increasingly assertive moves and Washington’s intransigent response—manifested in numerous close encounters between U.S. and Chinese ships and aircraft—risk sparking an open confrontation. Should tensions in the South China Sea escalate, the best option for Taipei would be to avoid any direct involvement. More likely than not, however, it would be put under pressure by both China and the United States to take a stance, not least due to the fact that Taiwan is the site of strategically important military assets, such as a highly advanced PAVE PAWS long-range early-warning radar, one of very few such systems in the world. More importantly, by virtue of controlling the island of Itu Aba (Taiping), the largest natural feature in the disputed Spratly Islands, Taiwan already has “boots on the ground” in the South China Sea and would thus find it hard to avoid involvement in any armed confrontation there. Taiwan’s presence in the region was highlighted again when outgoing president Ma Ying-jeou chose to visit Itu Aba in January 2016, irritating not only Vietnam and the Philippines, but also the United States.

In the event of an outbreak of open hostilities in the South or East China Sea, Taiwan’s ability to cooperate with any of the other actors in the region would be constrained by the fact that the Taiwanese government’s official position on the territorial disputes is largely identical to Beijing’s: Taipei has long claimed most of the contested islands and reefs as a part of the sovereign territory of “China.” It therefore finds itself in a particularly intricate situation: it has a number of natural allies in the region that share its aversion to the newfound assertiveness in the foreign policy pursued by China, yet it officially agrees with Beijing on the issue of China’s territorial claims vis-à-vis these states. Speculations that the DPP-led Taiwanese government, which emphasizes Taiwan’s autonomy and its historical distinctness from China, may choose to officially dissociate itself from these expansive territorial claims, have so far proven unfounded. When an international tribunal established by the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in July that many of China’s core claims in the South China Sea are groundless, Taipei joined Beijing in roundly rejecting the ruling. President Tsai stated that the tribunal’s decision (which included the ruling that Itu Aba should be classified as a rock and as such is not entitled to a two-hundred-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone) had “gravely harmed” Taiwan’s rights in the South China Sea, and in response Taipei dispatched a warship to patrol the contested region and reassert Taiwanese claims there. Beijing and Taipei displayed a wholly uncharacteristic unity in their joint dismissal of the ruling, as the vice chairman of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council stated that the tribunal’s rejection of the “nine-dash line” that marks China’s claims to 80 percent of the South China Sea, was unacceptable, while the Chinese government praised Taiwan’s efforts to “defend” Itu Aba.

 

SHOULD CHINA decide to employ military force in the Taiwan Strait—including any measure short of an outright invasion, such as a naval blockade—the situation for Taiwan would be dire. The balance of military power, always highly unfavorable for Taipei, has never been as lopsided as it is today. According to estimates by Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense (based in particular on an assessment of the development of missile systems, bombers and fourth-generation stealth fighter aircraft), China will have gained sufficient military capabilities to launch a large-scale invasion of Taiwan with good prospects of success by 2020. While Beijing has consistently boosted its armed forces, Taiwan’s military budget remains remarkably low, accounting for little more than 2 percent of its GDP, much to the chagrin of senior U.S. defense officials.

Taipei’s relative military disadvantage has been compounded by the fact that its principal ally, the United States, as well as other Western governments, have become very reluctant to supply state-of-the-art defense technology to the Taiwanese military out of concern about adversarial reactions from Beijing. The resulting lack of access to critical new defense technology is affecting the entire range of relevant weapons systems. In mid-December 2015, the Obama administration finally cleared another major arms sale worth $1.83 billion to Taiwan, including two decommissioned guided-missile frigates, amphibious assault vehicles, and antitank and surface-to-air missiles. It was the first such sales clearance in more than four years, but it appears not to have included any critical cutting-edge military technology.

One of the most pressing concerns for Taiwan’s military planners has been the development of an indigenous attack submarine, which is regarded as an essential missing link in the island’s defense structure. The project has proven very difficult to develop, as most countries with the requisite technological know-how have refused to cooperate with Taipei for fear of jeopardizing their ties with Beijing, although Washington now appears willing to provide at least a limited degree of assistance in the development process. The plans for submarine development are part of the asymmetric defense strategy adopted by the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense in response to the continuous growth of China’s military power. Another central component of this strategy is the development of a fleet of state-of-the-art Tuo Chiang–class stealth corvettes, each equipped with sixteen potent Hsiung Feng antiship missiles. The rationale for developing this type of warship is to employ it as a cheap and effective means of countering China’s massive naval development at a fraction of its cost (a flotilla of five Tuo Chiang–class corvettes costs about $350 million). By resorting to these and similar means of asymmetric defense, including a large network of “smart mines,” Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense currently estimates that the Taiwanese armed forces would be able to fend off a Chinese invasion for at least thirty days. Following the projected thirty-day period, Taiwan’s survival would depend on large-scale military support from the United States.

The nature and degree of American involvement in a potential cross-Strait confrontation would be a crucial variable that critically affects the strategic calculations of the leaderships in Beijing and in Taipei. It is a commonly held belief among the Taiwanese public that, should there be a military conflict with Beijing, the United States would be bound to intervene in support of Taiwan. In practice, however, there is no alliance treaty between Washington and Taipei that explicitly specifies an American commitment to defend the island. The Taiwan Relations Act passed by Congress in 1979—which, along with the “Six Assurances” given to Taiwan by Ronald Reagan in 1982, was reaffirmed by the House of Representatives as recently as May 2016—stipulates that the United States will do what is necessary to “enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.” But this falls far short of an explicit defense commitment. Nor would such a commitment be backed by a majority of the American public: According to a recent poll, more than 70 percent of Americans would oppose sending U.S. troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

Beijing’s last attempt to resort to military force in its relations with Taipei—the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1995–96—was met by a stern response from Washington, which dispatched two carrier battle groups to the region and warned Beijing that any further military aggression against Taiwan would bring “grave consequences” for China. Since then, however, U.S. military preponderance over China has dwindled. A 2015 assessment by the RAND Corporation projects that the U.S. military would now be facing major operational problems in prevailing in any conflict with Chinese forces over Taiwan. In view of the Trump administration’s determination to drive a harder bargain with China, Taipei might nonetheless receive further American assurances in the future. In December, the U.S. Congress approved the National Defense Authorization Act, which provides for official reciprocal exchanges between U.S. and Taiwanese senior military officials for the first time since the 1970s. For Washington, a lack of support for Taiwan during a potential confrontation with Beijing could entail a serious loss of credibility with many of its key partners and allies in East and Southeast Asia, raising doubts about its wider defense commitments in this vitally important region.

 

AFTER A prolonged period of tranquility and rapprochement between Beijing and Taipei, cross-Strait relations are once again headed for troubled times. The apparent realignment of Washington’s Taiwan policy is occurring at a time when Beijing, dissatisfied with the new leadership in Taipei and increasingly assertive towards the United States, has already enacted punitive measures against Taiwan, both diplomatic and economic. Beijing is beginning to feel that it has exhausted all peaceful options of bringing Taiwan back into the fold, and Xi Jinping does not seem entirely averse to the prospect of using some form of military pressure to prevent Taipei from drifting further away from the mainland. Ahead of a key leadership transition in China’s Communist Party in late 2017, and with nationalist sentiment rising in the mainland, Xi does not want to appear weak on matters considered nonnegotiable core interests for the party—particularly Taiwan.

President Tsai Ing-wen, meanwhile, is keen to preserve the status quo of cross-Strait relations and has adopted a conciliatory tone towards Beijing, but she has been equally adamant in her affirmation of Taiwanese autonomy and her refusal to render explicit homage to the one-China principle. Tsai is under pressure domestically, as the same social activists and independence-minded “dark-Green” factions in her own party that helped propel her to power are now demanding that she take an uncompromising stance vis-à-vis Beijing. Tsai’s domestic approval ratings have been sliding precipitously since she assumed office, but her defiant stance on cross-Strait relations and the 1992 Consensus is supported by a large majority of the population. Many in Taiwan have been hopeful that Donald Trump’s statements on the one-China principle may signal positive change for the island’s status, but they remain wary of becoming a mere bargaining chip in a great-power game. Also, while the Trump administration has raised hopes in Taipei that U.S.-Taiwan diplomatic relations might be upgraded, Donald Trump’s economic isolationism and his decision to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement are bad news for export-reliant Taiwan. The United States is Taiwan’s second-largest trading partner (following China) and Taiwanese companies serve as major suppliers of U.S. tech giants like Apple, which have been pressured by Trump to relocate production to America, raising the prospect of trade disputes between Washington and Taipei.

Considering the interconnectedness of problems in the East Asian region, and the fact that any worsening of tensions in the Taiwan Strait could easily spill over into the South China Sea and beyond, the Trump administration should avoid trying to use the complex and volatile issue of Taiwan as leverage to extract economic and political concessions from Beijing. Instead, it should formulate a consistent strategy on cross-Strait relations that is closely coordinated with its allies in the region. Concrete measures that Washington could take include using its diplomatic clout to oppose any further moves by Beijing to undermine Taiwan’s diplomatic status in international forums and providing Taipei with greater access to military technology, thus ensuring that it can develop a more credible military deterrent. With this in mind, Washington should also impress upon Taipei the need for higher defense spending, even in economically trying times. Beyond that, it would be wise for the Trump administration to defer any substantial policy moves regarding Taiwan until after the conclusion of the nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in late 2017, which will oversee the reshuffling of membership in China’s top leadership bodies, putting particular pressure on the current Chinese government to appear steadfast on issues like Taiwan. The overall priority for Washington should be to preserve the cross-Strait status quo and to avoid making formal commitments to Taipei that would galvanize nationalist hard-liners in mainland China and could raise false hopes among pro-independence forces in Taiwan, which are already exerting substantial pressure on the Taiwanese government.

Amid an overall aggravation of great-power rivalries in East Asia, Taiwan’s president and the new U.S. administration will have to tread carefully and steer a cautious course between the ambitions of the Taiwanese people, whose attachment to China is rapidly dwindling, and an increasingly assertive Beijing that is tightening the screws of authoritarianism at home and shows a growing willingness to throw its weight around in the region. Alongside the various existing geopolitical hot spots in East Asia, the Taiwan Strait may soon reemerge as another openly contested territory.

Björn Alexander Düben is an assistant professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, Jilin University, and an associate of LSE ideas at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image: ROC military honor guards. Wikimedia Commons/Taiwan Presidential Office