RICHARD BUSH:Heritage Foundation Asian Studies Center director Walter Lohman contradicted the former AIT chairman, saying talk of Taiwan would only be ‘pro forma’

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 23, 2015
By: William Lowther  /  Staff reporter in WASHINGTON

Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is likely to make Taiwan a “major issue” during his White House summit with US President Barack Obama this week, former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) chairman Richard Bush said on Monday.

Obama should urge Xi to be “cautious” and avoid making a “sensitive issue worse” in China’s response to a possible Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) victory in the January elections, said Bush, who is now director for East Asia policy studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

There was a “good chance” that the DPP would come back to power, he said in a post on the Brookings Web site titled “The return of the Taiwan issue to US-China relations.”

Xi’s message to Obama was likely to be: “You Americans don’t realize the danger that the DPP and its presidential candidate, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), pose. You need to do your part to contain what will become a bad situation,” Bush wrote.     [FULL  STORY]