Between a rock and a hard place, one finds Taiwan. High global tensions over the island—claimed by China as a breakaway province—were on display this week as Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met in California with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and a bipartisan group of US lawmakers.
This meeting was “another poke in the eye” of mainland China, the South China Morning Post editorialized, as Tsai’s visit followed the contentious trip last year by then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan—which provoked large Chinese military exercises around the island. By contrast, Beijing’s response this week was relatively “muted,” Charlie Campbell writes for Time.
“The shift in messaging (by Beijing) is telling and deliberate,” Campbell writes, assessing what Beijing likely wished to communicate: “firstly, that Tsai’s decision to meet McCarthy in the U.S., rather than Taipei, is less of an affront and therefore requires less of a response; and, by extension, that the islanders have agency in cross-Strait ties. The latter is important as (Taiwanese) presidential elections approach in January, when how to manage relations with China will dominate campaigning.”
Tsai has reached her term limit, and Taiwan will elect a new leader in that vote. In a Financial Times essay, Kathrin Hille depicts Taiwan as in flux, politically, over its relationship with China. Polls show Taiwanese national identity as far more common on the island than Chinese or shared identity (Hille cautions that such survey results can fluctuate), but Hille writes that views seem more ambivalent about relations with the US. Notably, Taiwan’s two main political parties differ over how to approach Beijing; as Tsai visited the US, former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou—of the KMT party, rival to Tsai’s DPP—paid a friendly visit to mainland China.
Viewing Ma’s visit as part of Beijing’s efforts to both entreat and coerce Taiwan toward reunification, Hille writes: “Chao Chun-shan, a China scholar who has advised four successive Taiwanese presidents on cross-Strait relations, predicts that Beijing will massively step up such tactics right after the (Taiwanese) elections (in January 2024). ‘They will put us on a fast track to unification,’ he says. ‘If the KMT wins, that will be done with carrots, to encourage us to start political negotiations, but if the DPP wins, it will be done with an even heavier use of the military to threaten Taiwan.’ Either way, Taiwan knows it cannot escape the shadow of its imposing neighbour.”
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