- Xi Jinping accused the US of trying to trick China into invading Taiwan, the Financial Times said.
- The Chinese leader made the claim to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, per the FT.
- One expert told BI it’s a sign that China is “genuinely surprised” by the attitude of US officials.
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For decades, the US has adopted “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan, positioning itself as the country’s most steadfast ally, while declining to explicitly say whether it would come to Taiwan’s aid if China attacked.
But the mood in Washington, DC, seems to be shifting, with Congress showing itself more “overtly supportive of Taiwan than only a few years ago,” Graeme Thompson, an analyst with the Eurasia Group, told Business Insider in November.
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“The US has plenty of public figures now talking of Taiwan like it is a new Ukraine, and some even saying it needs to be diplomatically recognized,” Brown added.
As absurd as it seems sometimes, the One China policy has kept the peace for decades. I wouldn’t toss it out without a very, very good reason.
I mean, to people under 50ish, Taiwan is a stable, functioning democracy with an advanced economy but that didn’t really happen until 1987. It was basically a fascistic military dictatorship prior to that. It’s a much more complicated history than we sometimes acknowledge. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taiwan_(1945–present)
I’m an elder millennial, I guess, and I was alive but too young to remember Taiwan’s first real elections. I get that the One China policy might feel like a relic of a bygone era since I know it from history books too. But most world leaders are old enough to remember when Taiwan was a dysfunctional, fascistic military dictatorship. It might require another few generations of peace before it’s fully consolidated.
I mean, to put it in perspective, Robocop, Lethal Weapon, and Predator came out in 1987. People old enough to see those movies in theaters remember a different era and likely have a fundamentally different understanding of Taiwan/Mainland relations. Xi, Biden, and Trump are all over 70.
Bro, Trump doesn’t know shit about anything. Xi and Biden though know very well.
Frankly it’s in Xi’s best benefit to not invade Taiwan, because it would cause a collapse of the One China policy. China benefits considerably from the current policy that’s ambiguous on recognizing Taiwan. The moment they invade though, that goes away, and it becomes inevitable that Taiwan gains international recognition as independent – presuming the US helps repel an invasion.
If there’s anything we’ve learned though from the last few years, it’s that seemingly intelligent world leaders can make idiotic decisions that go against their best interest – namely Putin and Ukraine. Xi strikes me as the type of person to keep yesmen like Putin, and that means he could make just as foolish a mistake.