CHINA-TAIWAN-USA

The speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan as a show of American solidarity with the island, defying repeated warnings from Beijing and fuelling a new round of US-China tensions.

China views Pelosi’s visit as a serious violation of the “One China “principle and the provisions of the three China-US joint communiqués. This according to Beijing, gravely undermines peace and stability in the region and sends a wrong signal to the separatist forces for Taiwan's independence.

WHAT IS THE ONE-CHINA PRINCIPLE AND ONE-CHINA POLICY

ONE CHINA PRINCIPLE (YIGE ZHONGGUO YUANZE)-The People’s Republic of China(PRC) follows the one-China principle, a core belief that sees Taiwan as an inalienable part of China, with its sole legitimate government in Beijing  The US acknowledges this position but not necessarily its validity.

US STAND

US follow the One China policy -meaning that the PRC was and is only China, with no recognition for the Republic of China (ROC Taiwan) as a separate sovereign entity. At the same time, the US refuses to give in to the PRC’s demands to recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan-it only acknowledges the Chinese position that Taiwan is a part of china.

GENESIS OF THE CHINA –TAIWAN TENSIONS?

• The ROC was founded in 1912 following the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the 1911 Revolution. Dr Sun Yat Sen, who assumed the presidency of the ROC, was soon succeeded by Yuan Shikai. Taiwan was at the time under Japanese colonial rule, having been ceded by the Qing following the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki.
• After the defeat of Japan in world war II, the ROC  government began exercising jurisdiction over Taiwan in 1945.
• After the communist won the civil war on the mainland, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic with its capital in Beijing on October 1, 1949. That December after the PLA advanced into Sichuan province, Chiang Kia-Shek, one of Sun Yat Sen’s lieutenants, retreated to the island of Taiwan along with some 2 million nationalist soldiers.
• The ROC has exercised effective jurisdiction over the main island and several outlying islands ever since, leaving Taiwan and China under the rule of different governments.
• The Taiwan Strait is only 130 km at its shortest distance, and the mainland city of Xiamen in Fujian is only 2 km from the Taiwanese-controlled island of Kinmen.
• Until 1970, the US and most Western governments recognized the ROC as the government of all of China. The US and PRC established diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979, almost 30 years after the communists came to power.
• There have been three instances of disturbances in the Taiwan strait in 1954,1958, and 1955-96 but peace has largely been maintained due to American” Strategic Ambiguity”.

SO WHAT HAS CHANGED NOW? HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Domestic policy aspects of all three countries –Taiwan, China and the US have contributed to today’s situation.

CHINA-In 2015 China initiated path-breaking military reforms to convert the PLA into a world-class force by 2049

One of China’s stated national security objectives has been reunification with Taiwan

Since September 2020, China has routinely sent aircraft into Taiwan‘s air defence identification zone (ADIZ). Meanwhile between 2018 and 2020 Xi dropped the word “peaceful” while referring to reunification with Taiwan, underlying his aggressive approach to territorial disputes everywhere.

TAIWAN-In 2016 the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Tsai Ing-Wen was elected President. On December 2 that year, she initiated a telephonic conversation with then US president-elect Donald Trump – the first time since 1979 that the two countries spoke at that level.

Under the Tsai administration, US –Taiwan relations warmed. In March 2018; Trump signed into law the Taiwan Travel Act, which allowed American officials to step-up exchanges with Taiwan.

Over the last six years, the US has approved multiple sales of arms to Taiwan –including 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks, Hercules armoured vehicles, heavy equipment transporters, rocket launchers, sensors, artillery, and 66 F16 Viper fighter jets.

China views all of this as the US attempts to use Taiwan to contain the PRC’s “peaceful rise “emboldening Taiwan’s pro-independence separatist activities and impacting cross-strait harmony.

UNITED STATES- antagonistic stance on security, economics, technology and ideology have crystallized under the Biden Administration with limited room for adjustment. The US has carried out a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing winter Olympics, added more Chinese companies to its trade restriction list, and Congress has passed a bill to counter China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

The Trump Administration had opened a more confrontational era in relations with China and Biden has concretized this approach by signing the AUKUS trilateral security pact with the UK and Australia and increasing Quad coordination with Japan, and India and Australia to limit Beijing‘s influence in the Indo Pacific region.

Way Forward

China is likely to make sure that it punishes Taiwan to the extent that visits such as Pelosi’s are deterred in the future. This might include economic measures, limited military measures for signalling, select diplomatic measures across bilateral and multilateral forums and offensive cyber coercion.

The US will continue signalling its increasing presence and resolve in the region by conducting freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, but at the same time, keep the line of communication open with Beijing to avoid unintended escalations.