In his first phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping since taking office, US President Donald Trump on Feb. 10 told his counterpart that his administration will honor the so-called one-China policy, a long-standing diplomatic formula underpinning Washington's relations with Beijing and Taipei. According to a White House statement, Trump and Xi spoke at length about a range of bilateral issues. Trump's affirmation of existing US policy of maintaining only unofficial ties with Taiwan came at the request of the Chinese president. (Mainland China and Taiwan both adhere to the idea that there is only one China, so if a country forges ties with either Beijing or Taipei, it must sever ties with the other.)
Relations between Washington and Beijing have been effectively frozen since December when Trump broke diplomatic tradition by taking a congratulatory phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen — the first such call since Washington and Beijing established diplomatic relations in 1979. Trump later suggested his administration may depart from its long-standing position on Taiwan if Beijing proves unwilling to make concessions on other issues such as trade. Beijing has repeatedly warned, however, that its one-China policy is nonnegotiable.
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Trump's turn back to the status quo suggests that heated debates are still unsettled within the new administration about how to manage US-China relations. Trump's campaign included ample hard-line rhetoric about China, and his team's statements on a range of issues — currency manipulation, China's militarization of contested waters in the South China Sea, its willingness to contain North Korea's nuclear program, and a potential easing of tensions between the United States and Russia — have triggered a broad reassessment inside Beijing. With the Chinese leadership preoccupied with maintaining control of a precarious economic rebalancing process and preparing for the key Party Congress later this year, this would not be a good time for significantly soured relations with Washington. Escalating trade tensions or growing security threats in the Western Pacific would jeopardize China's focus on internal stability, even if Beijing will have some countermeasures at its disposal — particularly in the economic, cyber security and maritime realms — as evidenced by China's seizure of a US naval drone in the South China Sea in December.
Recently, there have been indications that Washington may soften its positions to defuse tensions. Earlier this week, for example, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared to walk back comments he made during his Senate confirmation hearings in which he appeared to advocate a blockade of Beijing's man-made islands in contested parts of the South China Sea. Meanwhile, during his recent trip to Japan and South Korea, US Defense Secretary James Mattis emphasized diplomatic solutions to the South China Sea issue. According to The New York Times, the debate inside the White House on Feb. 9 centered on whether it should publicly reaffirm its commitment to the one-China policy. But even with Trump's apparent endorsement of the policy, Beijing expects no easy relief. The new administration in Washington may still have other options to leverage its relationship with Taiwan in pursuit of concessions from Beijing, potentially through increased arms sales or defense cooperation. In fact, the US National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 included for the first time a section on senior military exchanges with Taiwan.
For Taipei, the latest shift from the White House is a significant setback. The Democratic Progressive Party-led government has exercised great caution to avoid further antagonizing Beijing. But its pro-independence policies and ongoing pursuit of economic autonomy have apparently broken the cross-strait diplomatic truce forged under previous administrations. China has moved quickly to pressure Taiwan with diplomatic isolation, military intimidation, and targeted economic coercion, and Beijing is also reportedly discussing more intensively the conditions under which to use military options against Taipei. If the White House begins to see its interests as once again diverging from Taipei's and wavers on its commitments, Taiwan might find itself the target of even more Chinese posturing and harassment operations.
"Trump Reverses Course on 'One-China' Principle" is republished with permission of Stratfor.
