If what the Chinese did to Hong Kong Taiwan would be crazy to entertain
any ‘one China Policy”
The 10-minute telephone call was the first such contact with Taiwan by a US president-elect or president since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, acknowledging Taiwan as part of “one China”.
“This is just the Taiwan side engaging in a petty action, and cannot change the one China structure already formed by the international community,” Wang said at an academic forum, Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV reported.
“I believe that it won’t change the longstanding ‘one China’ policy of the United States government.”
China considers Taiwan a wayward province and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control. Defeated Nationalist forces fled there at the end of a civil war with the Communists in 1949.
Chinese President Xi Jinping met Taiwan’s then-President Ma Ying-jeou last year but relations between the two sides have worsened since the election of Tsai as president in January.
Washington remains Taiwan’s most important political ally and sole arms supplier, despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties.
Advisers to the Republican president-elect have indicated that he is likely to take a more robust policy toward China than Obama, a Democrat, and that Trump plans to boost the US military in part in response to China’s increasing power in Asia. However, details of his plans remain scant.
Trump lambasted China throughout the US election campaign, drumming up headlines with pledges to slap 45% tariffs on imported Chinese goods and label the country a currency manipulator on his first day in office.
What Trump has done is not “reset” Washington’s relations with China but put them on an entirely new footing. Up to now, Beijing has kept the initiative, and American presidents, especially George W. Bush and Obama, have merely reacted, trying to build friendly relations in spite of increasingly bold Chinese moves. The concept was that Washington had to maintain cooperative ties, increasingly considered an end in itself.
ReplyDeleteTrump, by seemingly not caring about Beijing’s reaction, has cut China down to size, telling its autocrats he does not fear them.