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TAIPEI, Taiwan — When Taiwan’s then-President Lee Teng-hui traveled to New York in 1995 to visit his alma mater, Cornell University, it set off a chain of events known as the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. China, which has furiously accused the United States of betraying its own “One China Policy,” conducted months of military exercises, including conducting missile tests toward Taiwan.
The United States responded by sailing two aircraft carrier battle groups through the straits to try to end the crisis.
Now that Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen is due to stop in New York on Wednesday on her way to Belize and Guatemala, there are fears of another crisis.
“Due to this rock bottom in US-China relations, both sides are aware of the risks of a misstep, a miscalculation, or an accident that could escalate into a more serious military confrontation with dire consequences,” said Jingdong Yuan, a professor who said focused on China’s defense policy at the University of Sydney.
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Hours before Tsai’s departure from Taipei, Beijing threatened retaliation if she held an expected meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in California on her return journey through the United States from Central America.
A meeting between the two would be “another provocation, seriously violating the one-China principle, damaging China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and undermining cross-strait peace and stability,” China Taiwan Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian said on Tuesday Wednesday at a briefing. “We are resolutely opposed to this and will take resolute countermeasures.”
The United States’ “One China Policy” recognizes, but does not expressly agree with, Beijing’s “One China Principle,” which states that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and that the People’s Republic of China is the only legitimate government. Officially, the United States takes no position on the status of Taiwan.
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While in New York, where she will be speaking at an event hosted by the centre-right Hudson Institute, Tsai could meet Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state who is now linked to the think tank, Taiwanese media reported. Pompeo said last year the United States should recognize Taiwan, which angered China.
Tsai’s trip comes amid heightened tensions over the Straits — exacerbated in no small part by McCarthy’s predecessor as spokeswoman, Nancy Pelosi, who visited Taiwan last year — and deteriorating relations between the United States and China. Beijing expressed its anger at Pelosi’s visit with aggressive military drills, including encircling the island.
Although Washington and Taipei have been careful to portray Tsai’s trip as a routine transit — since the United States has no official diplomatic ties with Taiwan, Tsai technically cannot pay an official visit — Beijing has described a meeting with McCarthy as a provocation that ” undermines peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits.”
Tsai has remained resolute.
“External pressure will not hamper our determination to go into the world,” she said Wednesday at Taoyuan Airport near Taipei, where her predecessor Ma Ying-jeou of the conservative Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, arrived just days earlier Shanghai left was the first former Taiwanese president to visit China.
The Biden administration has sought to downplay the visit, noting that Tsai has held meetings with members of Congress during previous transits. “So there is absolutely no reason for Beijing to use this upcoming transit as an excuse or pretext to carry out aggressive or coercive activities against Taiwan,” a senior government official told reporters on Tuesday night on condition of anonymity.
The first to travel to China is former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou
But Beijing’s increasingly assertive stance in the global arena is making itself felt not only militarily but also diplomatically.
The Chinese Communist Party’s global pressure campaign to isolate the island – which it has never ruled but claims sovereignty over – gathered momentum over the weekend as Honduras severed ties with Taipei and moved to recognize Beijing. This has reduced the number of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies to just 13.
As such, Tsai will travel to Belize and Guatemala to try to strengthen diplomatic ties with them. Five of the nine countries that have switched allegiances since Tsai took office in 2016 are in Central America: Nicaragua, Panama, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and now Honduras.
Elections will be held in both Guatemala and Paraguay in the coming months. As Honduran President Xiomara Castro did during the election campaign, Paraguay’s opposition candidate has pledged to switch allegiance to Beijing if elected, raising the possibility that Taiwan will lose another ally in the region.
Beijing appears to be using all of its influence to persuade small countries to switch, including promising investments and access to its vast market. It has also reportedly offered coronavirus vaccines and other assistance to persuade Paraguay to switch sides.
Just hours before announcing it would cut ties, Honduras asked Taiwan for about $2.5 billion, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said, describing the request as a bribe rather than diplomacy.
After Honduras’ move, the ministry said China was making “flashy but unrealistic” promises to shake off Taiwan’s remaining allies.
Chung Chih-tung, a research fellow at Taiwan’s government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said Taiwan has “a threshold for friendships bought through money diplomacy.”
“Of course we will do our best to maintain diplomatic relations, but we will also set a threshold if countries ask too much,” he said.
But while China has belittled Taiwan’s international ties — and given the inevitability that more and more small countries will succumb to the gargantuan grants and investment deals China is offering potential allies — Taipei has adjusted its diplomatic approach, analysts say.
It’s one that no longer depends solely on formal recognition, but emphasizes Taiwan’s status both as a vibrant democracy and as a producer of specialty technology.
As Washington has taken steps to restrict China’s access to computer chips, countries from Germany to Japan have become increasingly aware that their access to advanced semiconductors depends on Taiwan.
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And Russia’s war in Ukraine has renewed awareness of Taiwan’s position as a democracy living in the shadow of autocracy, prompting the international community to draw comparisons between Ukraine and Taiwan, said Kitsch Liao, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub in Washington.
“The old nightmare scenario was that China fired the first shot and the rest of the world struggled to figure out where Taiwan was on the map,” Liao said. Between Pelosi’s visit, China’s growing global influence and Russia’s war in Ukraine, there is now greater recognition of what – and where – Taiwan is.
This growing visibility has allowed Taiwan to be more selective in allocating resources to its diplomatic relations.
“Taiwan provides an important platform for many political figures from around the world to send a clear public signal of their commitment to shared democratic values and freedoms,” said Wen-Ti Sung, political scientist at Australia National University.
Although they have no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, many countries — including the United States — maintain outposts in Taiwan that function as embassies in all but name.
The number of high-level ministerial visits from countries like Germany and Japan to Taipei has also intensified under Tsai’s government. In the past three months alone, Britain, Switzerland, Finland, Spain, Kosovo, Romania and Lithuania have sent parliamentary delegations – and ministers from Germany and the Czech Republic – to Taipei.
Officials have emphasized building relationships with “like-minded countries” during Tsai’s second term.
“Taiwan now values international relations that are substantive rather than symbolic,” said Chung of the National Defense and Security Research Institute. “Countries that can influence if something really happens across the Taiwan Strait are at the heart of Taiwan’s current diplomacy.”
This approach could pay off now that China’s threats against Taiwan are increasing. Though it’s Tsai who is traveling this week – her office suggested visiting McCarthy rather than traveling to the island so as not to anger China in the run-up to Taiwan’s presidential election next January – analysts are predicting pro-democrats Lawmakers will go ahead to propose a path to Taipei.
“Mao Zedong used to say, ‘If you haven’t been to the Great Wall, you’re not a real hero,'” said ANU’s Sung. “They say, ‘If you haven’t been to Taiwan, you’re not a real hero.'”
Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei, Taiwan contributed to this report.