DIPLOMATIC SURPRISE:Former diplomat Kunihiko Miyake said the Tsai-Trump phone call did not break US protocols and should reinforce US-Taiwan relations

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 09, 2016
By: Chang Mao-sen and Jake Chung / Staff reporter in Tokyo, with staff writer

The telephone call between President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and US president-elect Donald Trump is the greatest diplomatic surprise in US-China diplomacy since 1979, an op-ed in the Sankei Shimbun said yesterday.

Japanese columnist Kunihiko Miyake wrote that the phone call was not happenstance, but the result of long-term, careful planning.

Citing the Shanghai Communique, Miyake said: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China,” which was not an agreement or recognition.

The phone call therefore is in no way a violation of the communique, Miyake said.    [FULL  STORY]