The most common concern expressed around the world about the high-level meeting in Beijing on May 14-15 was the fear that the future of Taiwan and its 23 million people could be traded in a deal between the men who lead the world’s two true superpowers, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
The US president may soften his country’s support for Taiwan in exchange for Chinese help to end the war in Iran. He could get such spectacular promises from Xi about Chinese purchases of soybeans or Boeing jets that he would agree to reduce US arms sales to Taiwan.
As far as we can tell from this secret summit, from which few public statements emerged, no such agreement was made.
The call between Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and President Donald Trump that took place shortly after he left Beijing would have been largely to reassure him and the Japanese government that nothing had changed, especially given the tension between China and Japan since Takaichi’s comments to the Diet last October about how Japan would respond to a military confrontation between China and Taiwan.
That won’t end the concern, especially since Trump and Xi have agreed to meet again on September 24, this time in Washington, DC. What stands out, however, is that the one place in Asia where the entire theater of the Trump-Xi dialogue seemed to be handled calmly, without serious concern, was Taiwan itself.
Even Trump’s statement, made on his flight to Washington, that he had not yet decided whether to give his approval to a proposed $14 billion package of arms sales to Taiwan, appeared to make few waves in Taipei. (Trump later also described the arms sale decision as “a good bargaining chip” with China, as well as renewing long-standing — and false — accusations that Taiwan had “stolen” semiconductor business from America.)
There is no doubt that Taiwan ranks number one among all possible flashpoints that could trigger a catastrophic conflict between the world’s nuclear superpowers and create an economic crisis that would make the current pain caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz seem insignificant.
These are powerful reasons to do everything possible, diplomatically and militarily, to make such a conflict less likely to break out. The stakes in any conflict over Taiwan in terms of strategic control over the western Pacific and, perhaps, in terms of global leadership would be so high as to make it terrifyingly possible that nuclear weapons would be used in such a war for the first time since the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So it’s worth asking why Taiwan itself seems relatively calm about the potential implications of the Trump-Xi summits. This can help us separate the noise that inevitably surrounds these summits from the real strategic signals that both sides are conveying.
One reason Taiwan is less worried than others is a simple one: it has had to learn to live with its geopolitically anomalous status for nearly 80 years now. If he got nervous every time Chinese and American leaders spoke, even the likes of Xi and Trump, he would soon have a nervous breakdown.
Furthermore, while the People’s Republic of China has certainly become much stronger economically, militarily, and politically, especially over the past two decades, so has Taiwan. The Taiwanese know that they cannot defeat China in a head-to-head conflict, but they also know that they are strong enough to impose large costs and pose high risks to China.
Ukraine’s success in resisting Russian occupation since February 2022 serves as an inspiration to Taiwan, but above all a warning to China.
What matters to Taiwan is that it can continue to strengthen its defenses sufficiently to help prevent an invasion.
Taiwan’s government – led by President Lai Ching-te of the Democratic People’s Party (DPP), who has ruled the island since 2016 – has been trying to persuade the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s parliament, to approve a major expansion in the defense budget, which will be used both to buy more US weapons and to expand the island’s defense production.
This has been a struggle as the DPP has not enjoyed a majority in the yuan since a general election in January 2024. On May 8 the yuan finally approved additional defense spending of $25 billion, but this expansion was far less than the $40 billion the DPP government had requested.
Among the challenges to Taiwan and the deterrent it could pose against Chinese forces, domestic politics have been more important than Trump’s diplomacy with Xi over arms sales.
In any case, the impact of America’s war on Iran on US stockpiles and delivery schedules for the most advanced weapons and defense systems means that, whatever Trump decides on the $14 billion package, it will be a long time before the weapons arrive.
Meanwhile, efforts are likely to focus on expanding domestic production, particularly of drones.
Taiwan would certainly be concerned if a US president pledged to end or drastically reduce arms sales to the island. But the Taiwanese also know two important things:
- In the US Congress there is a clear and stable majority in favor of supplying arms to Taiwan, a majority that will probably grow stronger after the mid-term congressional elections in November; AND
- America will have a new president in 2029. The planning horizon for defense spending and investment is much longer than the American electoral cycle.
What will have been closely watched in Taipei will not have been the speculation and other noises surrounding the Beijing summit, but the consistency of the lines followed by the two leaders.
Xi gave his usual warnings against foreign interference on the Taiwan issue, warnings that are all too familiar to Takaichi and Japan, but he gave no indication of added urgency.
Trump is not famous for sticking to official scripts, but he appears to have done so in Taiwan. He even highlighted America’s longstanding policy of “strategic ambiguity” about whether to intervene militarily to defend Taiwan.
He will have felt politically comfortable in this way to deviate from the relative clarity that his predecessor President Joe Biden had expressed in 2021-2022 about his willingness to fight. But that period, during the Russian occupation of Ukraine, was a period of particular uncertainty about the intentions of Russia and China. A return to strategic ambiguity does not count in Taiwan’s eyes as a change in US policy.
The ultimate lesson is that Taiwan’s status is a long-term concern, not one that can be swayed by the kabuki drama of presidential summits.
China knows its best hope lies not in presidential deals with Trump, but in getting a sitting president in Taiwan, after the next election there in early 2028, who is more favorable to China than Lai Ching-te. If this can be done, then the effort can begin to push and if necessary force Taiwan into absorption into China.
It still won’t be easy, as Taiwanese public opinion remains strongly against absorption. But that’s the real strategic agenda, and it’s not one that will center on the man in the White House, although Trump likes to think he should be the center of everything.
This English original of a ITEM published in Japanese and English by the Mainichi Shimbun reprinted with kind permission. Along with many other articles it can also be found at Bill Emmott’s Global View.
