by Memphis Barker, Senior Foreign Correspondent and Connor Stringer, Chief Washington Correspondent
During his first term, Donald Trump would sometimes take out one of his Sharpie pens and point to its tip. “That’s Taiwan,” he would say. Then he would gesture to the entire Resolute Desk. “That’s China.”
It is the president’s sense of the mismatch between the two nations – one so tiny as to be almost irrelevant – that “worries Taiwan and everyone else”, says John Bolton, who observed the pantomime as national security director at the time. “To Trump, it’s just some piece of territory.”
When the president arrives in Beijing on Wednesday, he will trail behind him an unfinished war in the Middle East and seek Chinese investment in American soybeans, poultry and Boeing jets.
The fear in Taipei is that Mr Trump will “sell out” Taiwan in some fashion – perhaps in private, or through an off-hand word – in exchange for the support of Xi Jinping, the Chinese president.
Chinese officials are pushing for the US to change its language around the self-governing island, which Beijing claims as part of its territory and has threatened to take by force.
Under the “One China” policy, Washington leaves its view on the dispute deliberately vague. It acknowledges, but does not endorse, China’s claim. The door is left open to US military action in Taiwan’s defence.
At the summit this week, Mr Xi is expected to apply pressure on Mr Trump to shift Washington’s official stance from “not supporting” Taiwanese independence, to actively “opposing” any formal break. (Taiwan’s current leaders do not seek de jure independence because they say the island already enjoys it de facto.)
Mr Trump will give no ground, White House insiders say. “Trump is not going to make some sort of big budge on Taiwan,” a source with knowledge of the preparations told The Telegraph. “There’s been no change of US policy coming out of those [previous Xi-Trump summits],” said a separate senior US official. “We don’t expect to see any changes in US policy going forward.”
A ‘grand bargain’ remains unlikely
There is widespread agreement that the president will not sign up to a “grand bargain” – Taiwan in exchange for a new trade deal, and Chinese help to end the war in Iran.
For one thing, the island manufactures the advanced AI chips that have kept the US in front of China in the race to dominate the technology. Risking that pipeline also risks the source of almost all the recent growth in the US stock market.
Nevertheless, concern remains that the president might make a “slip of the tongue” in favour of China – either now, or after three further meetings with Mr Xi that could take place before the end of the year.
He sets less store in traditional, delicately loaded forms of rhetorical statecraft than any previous occupant of the White House.
Earlier this year, he said that what happened to Taiwan was “up to him [Xi Jinping]”, casting off decades of precedent with little more than a shrug.
According to Politico, people close to the president are encouraging him to watch his words carefully, but are fearful he may not have enough invested in the island’s fate to stick to the script.
To further divide the piece and maintain that authoritative, broadsheet pace, here are two additional subheads. These focus on the geopolitical consequences and the final “optics” of the trip:
The regional fallout of a rhetorical shift
Any linguistic shift would nevertheless damage Taiwan and America’s standing in the region, said Jon Czin, a former CIA China analyst and fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank.
“Trump may not see it as a big deal,” he said. “But Beijing would, and I think more importantly, our allies and partners in the region will see it as very consequential.”
Mr Trump would be “abetting Xi’s strategy towards Taiwan, which is to demonstrate to them that they are in a cul-de-sac, to try to demoralise the island and say the US is abandoning you. The only way forward is some kind of political negotiation with Beijing.”
Mr Xi’s hopes for a peaceful “reunification” hang partly on the outcome of the 2028 election, where the more pro-Beijing Kuomintang (KMT) party is hoping to oust the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which rejects China’s claims of sovereignty.
Last month, Cheng Li-wun, the head of the KMT, became the first party leader to visit China in more than a decade. Mr Xi said the pair shared a vision of “peaceful development of cross-strait relations”. In December, the KMT blocked a $40bn special defence budget put forward by the DPP, earning praise inside China.
“I can see a lot of downsides to [shifting US language on Taiwan],” said Mr Czin. “And very little upside.”
Even if China promises to help bring about a final peace deal with Iran in return, the words may not mean much.
“The question will be, what are they doing? How hard are they leaning on the Iranians? I think Beijing is happy to say, ‘Yeah, we’ll put pressure on Iran. We support peace.’ [But] I think they will frame it as being totally consistent with their talking points since the start of the war.”
“Look at the North Korea issue and how they’ve handled that,” Mr Czin added. “They very fitfully put any meaningful pressure on Pyongyang. And from their perspective, Iran is much further afield.”
Dr Ming-Shih Shen, a research fellow at the Taipei-based Institute for National Defence and Security Research, said that Mr Trump’s entourage would attempt to restrain any “bargain”.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, is set to join the trip. Before the Xi-Trump summit in Busan last October, Mr Rubio said “walking away from Taiwan” was simply not on the agenda. In 2020, the former senator was sanctioned by China, a move that reflected his openly hawkish views on Hong Kong and Beijing’s treatment of the Muslim Uyghur minority.
“Trump is a crazy man,” said Dr Shen. “But I think his cabinet and Mr Rubio will remind him not to go too far.”
The looming midterm shadow
In addition, Beijing understands that Mr Trump may well become a diminished force after the November midterms, where the Republicans face serious losses. Promises he makes could well be overturned by Congress, making any concessions to earn them somewhat wasteful.
And Mr Trump’s loose tongue cuts both ways. Just because he adopts a new form of wording prized by Beijing does not mean he might not step up arms sales to Taipei the next month – and change the wording again the month after that.
Many China analysts believe Mr Xi’s baseline goal from the talks will be more modest: to ensure Mr Trump does not approve a proposed $14bn arms package, which the White House suspended in February to avoid upsetting Beijing.
That ought to be achievable at a time when America’s own stockpiles are running thin because of the war with Iran.
“I don’t think there’s huge ambitions on the part of either leader,” said Bonnie Glaser, an Indo-Pacific specialist at the German Marshall Fund think tank. “Trump wants to be treated like a king. He wants the optics of being the most important leader in the world. He was very well received last time, with the big red carpet treatment in 2017, and he expects an even more ostentatious reception this time.”
*Published first on The Telegraph
By: N. Peter Kramer
