The meeting last week between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and American president Donald Trump offers lessons for Taiwan in terms of Trump’s unpredictability...
The resignation of American secretary of defense James Mattis after the unilateral decision by American president Donald Trump to withdraw US troops from Syria after a phone call with Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should be noted with caution in Taiwan...
Recent actions by the Chinese government against the governments of America and Canada are highly likely to be retribution for the current detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Canada at America’s behest, with Meng set to eventually be extradited to America. This includes the detention of Canadian ex-diplomat Michael Kovrig in China, the detention of Canadian entrepreneur Michael Spavor, and the banning of most iPhone models from sale in China on intellectual property grounds....
A surprise development in US-China trade relations has been the arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou in Canada. Meng is slated to be deported to the US on charges of violating sanctions, with allegations that Huawei sold goods to Iran in knowing violation of trade sanctions. Does this mean that the US-China trade war is back on? The results of the arrest were immediate, with the Dow Jones crashing 800 points in its fourth-largest drop in history...
Taiwan can breathe a sigh of relief after the Trump-Xi meeting which took place on the sidelines of the G-20 conference in Argentina on Saturday. Namely, Taiwan did not come up in any substantive manner during the meeting, with economic tensions between America and China being the main object of negotiation between Trump and Xi...
US-Taiwan relations and US-China relations will likely see no major shift after the results of American midterm elections. As such, the current status quo will remain, pending future political shifts...
As raised in a recent The Diplomat article, statements by Taiwanese political leaders gesture towards an attempt to situate Taiwan within the framework of the “Indo-Pacific”. The “Indo-Pacific” would be the Trump administration’s preferred terminology to refer to how it strategically envisions America’s role in the geopolitical terrain of what is more commonly referred to as the “Asia Pacific,” or what was referred to as “Trans-Pacific” in the now-defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership...
Tensions between the US and China continue to increase, as illustrated in a recent series of statements by senior Trump administration officials, something that policy thinkers in Taiwan have clearly noticed. On the other hand, Trump himself continues to prove the largest wild card in US-China relations. This is something that many in Taiwan do not seem to realize...
Recent comments by American vice president Mike Pence at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC have made waves in Taiwan, with the perception that such comments are made as the articulation of a stronger pro-Taiwan and more anti-China stance by the US. However, this would be yet another indication of a strong disconnect between Taiwan’s perception of the United States and what is political reality in the United States...
Recent comments by American president Donald Trump lashing out at what he claims are Chinese attempts to interfere in American midterm elections are ironic...
