Trump might want to use the island as a bargaining chip – but for China, it’s a matter of principle
Foreign Policy
Date: January 3, 2017
By: Patricia Kim
History Shows Beijing Won’t Budge an Inch on Taiwan
BEIJING – FEBRUARY 1972: U.S. President Richard Nixon (L) toasts with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai (R) during his trip to China in February 1972. (Photo by AFP/Getty Images)
Much has been made of President-elect Donald Trump’s phone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and his statement in a recent interview that he does not understand “why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things,” Some have criticized Trump for unnecessarily shaking up a delicate understanding on Taiwan that has underpinned decades of U.S.-China relations.
Others have expressed a range of cautious optimism for Taiwan’s sake, to outright praise for Trump for refusing to “kowtow” to the Chinese. And some, including the student leaders of the 2014 Sunflower Movement that began in opposition to a Beijing-pushed trade deal, have decried the use of Taiwan as a “tool to score political points.” But the real issue is this: Trump’s gambit won’t work, because Beijing doesn’t believe it owes Washington anything for recognizing Taiwan as a part of China.
Trump is not the first president to try to use Taiwan as leverage with Beijing. Richard Nixon, while negotiating the opening of relations with China from 1971 to 1972, tried to link American concessions on Taiwan to Chinese cooperation in Vietnam. Around this time, thousands of U.S. troops were deployed in Taiwan as part of the United States’ mutual defense treaty with the Republic of China (ROC). [FULL STORY]
