As Beijing squeezes Taiwan, Trump’s US gives Tsai a warm embrace
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s tour of the Americas, with stopovers in Los Angeles and Houston, is evidence that however diplomatically isolated Taipei may appear to be, it “does not stand alone”
Cross-strait relations have deteriorated since Tsai’s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party won power. Beijing has frozen all contact and ramped up its campaign to assert its sovereignty.
It is trying to exclude Taiwan from as many international forums as it can and has ordered foreign companies to refer to Taiwan as being part of China.
What would the US do if Beijing decided to take Taiwan by force?
Tsai was welcomed on board her plane by James Moriarty, Chairman of the American Association of Taiwan, and escorted by a motorcade from airport to hotel, where Taiwanese flags waved beside US ones. Tsai met Senator Cory Gardner, chairman of foreign relations subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, and three ranking US House lawmakers, including foreign affairs committee chairman Ed Royce.
Is Taiwan warming to mainland China as Beijing turns up the heat?
She visited the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office’s Culture Centre, the first such visit by a Taiwanese president to an official institute since the US switched diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. She also hosted a banquet for more than 1,000 Taiwanese expatriates, attended the Taiwanese American Film Festival, and visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where she made her first public speech on US soil. Her visit was also the first time journalists accompanying a Taiwanese president were allowed to file their stories before leaving the US.
Strait talk: are China and Taiwan on the brink of conflict?
It offers further evidence that US-Taiwan ties are warming under Trump, who has previously approved the sale of American submarine technology to Taiwan and signed the Taiwan Travel Act. On Monday, when Tsai was in Los Angeles, Trump signed into law the National Defence Authorisation Act, which calls for the upgrading of military support to Taiwan. Both pieces of pro-Taiwan legislation received overwhelming support from both houses. As Tsai noted in her speech in the US, despite its diplomatic isolation, “Taiwan does not stand alone”. ■
Cary Huang, a senior writer with the South China Morning Post, has been a China affairs columnist since the 1990s