Cole responds to Dr. Liu Yawei’s article about his ideas on conflict resolution in the Taiwan Strait.

The News Lens
Date: 2017/04/08
By: J. Michael Cole

In an article published in the Diplomat on April 4, Dr. Liu Yawei(劉亞偉), director of the

Photo Credit: Reuters/達志影像

China Program at the Carter Center and founding editor of the U.S.-China Perception Monitor, proposes five areas in which U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping(習近平), could cooperate after their groundbreaking meeting in Florida later this week.

While there is much to agree on his first four “doables,” which among other things call for Beijing and Washington to work together in resolving a variety of global challenges, from trade to territorial dispute, his last point, which is specifically on the Taiwan “issue,” presents a picture of the trilateral relationship that unfortunately has much more in common with the Chinese Communist Party’s wishes than with reality, a fact which weakens the potency of Dr. Liu’s “doables” as a means to shed light on, if not resolve, the longstanding dispute.
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