Unlike tensions over trade and North Korea, it involves red lines on both sides

The Economist
Date: Apr 5th 2018
By: Banyan 

IF THE partisanship of American politics unsettles you, take heart from a little piece of legislation that sailed through both houses of Congress with not a single vote opposed to it. And though the Taiwan Travel Act could have passed into law without a presidential signature, last month Donald Trump chose to put his cardiogrammatic scrawl to it. Given the chaos in Washington, the act reveals a remarkable consensus. It urges, though it does not mandate, high-level visits between America and Taiwan of the kind that successive administrations have discouraged, so as not to offend China.

That country’s “one-China principle” decrees that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese motherland. The Chinese government wants all other countries to act as if Taiwan belongs to it. America has never agreed to the formulation since breaking off diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979 in order to establish them with China. It has made plain that Taiwan is a friend, to which it has long offered military support. But, in deference to China, American policy has never been to call Taiwan a separate country and always to “acknowledge” that both China and Taiwan agree on the principle that there is only one China, even if the two sides disagree over what exactly that means.
[FULL  STORY]