By Antoni Slodkowski and James Pomfret
BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) – The U.S. government has for years urged China to show “restraint” in its claims over Taiwan and abandon military threats aimed at bringing the democratically governed island back under its control.
Today – some Chinese commentators say – the power of this long-standing American message has been undermined by US President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, by force if necessary. Trump takes office on January 20.
The implications of Trump’s comments for U.S. policy toward Taiwan have been widely discussed in recent days on Chinese social media platforms and by foreign policy analysts.
Although nothing is likely to change in the short term in the military standoff over Taiwan, some say Trump’s break with the norms of American diplomacy could create an opening for China.
A China expert said Trump’s first term showed he viewed foreign policy as transactional in nature, and suggested he might favor a deal on Taiwan.
Zhao Minghao, a professor at the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said Trump’s threats to take Greenland, the Panama Canal and even Canada should be taken seriously.
“Furthermore, we need to think about Trump’s transactionalism, which he also takes seriously. Many in China continue to perceive Trump as a negotiator, even on very difficult issues like the Taiwan issue,” he said .
China’s Foreign Ministry said it was “absurd” to try to link Greenland’s status to that of Taiwan.
“The Taiwan issue is an internal issue of China, and how to resolve it is up to the Chinese people,” he said in a statement sent to Reuters.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry, when asked whether Trump’s comments could give impetus to China creating unrest over Taiwan, said the Republic of China, the official name of the island, is a “sovereign and independent country”.
“Any distortion of Taiwan’s sovereign status will not change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait,” he said in a statement.
Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China has maintained that Taiwan is part of its territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.
A limiting factor for Beijing is that the United States is required by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, although it is unclear whether American forces would come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of war with the China due to a policy of “strategic ambiguity”. .
Trump provided significant support to Taiwan, including regulating arms sales, during his first term. But during last year’s campaign, Trump said Taiwan should pay the United States to defend itself. Taiwan has repeatedly said it is committed to increasing its defense spending.
Certainly, the question of Taiwan is very different from the situations of Greenland, Canada or the Panama Canal: in the eyes of China, Taiwan is already legally a Chinese territory whose destiny is to “return to the motherland”. Taiwan rejects these claims.
Nevertheless, Trump’s comments on Greenland created a stir on Chinese social networks, which are subject to censorship.
“If Greenland is annexed by the United States, China must take Taiwan,” wrote Wang Jiangyu, a law professor at the City University of Hong Kong, on the microblog site Weibo (NASDAQ:).
A commenter on a blog run by Chinese search engine Baidu (NASDAQ:) said that if Trump does indeed act on Greenland, China should “seize the opportunity to take back Taiwan.”
“Trump seems to be serious, so we too should see what we can get out of this,” the person wrote, using the name “Hongtu Shumeng.”
Chen Fei, an associate professor at the School of Politics and International Studies at Central China Normal University, wrote on Chinese news portal NetEase (NASDAQ:) that, just like Greenland for Trump, Taiwan represented a key security interest for China.
But the two issues are not the same, because what Trump is doing directly threatens another country’s sovereignty, he added.
“Taiwan is an intrinsic territory of China and a purely internal affair of China. It has nothing to do with the sovereignty of any other country.”
However, Bonnie Glaser, a Taiwan expert at the US German Marshall Fund, said that for Chinese President Xi Jinping, other factors carried more weight, particularly his assessment of the country’s military capabilities and the likely costs that China would incur if it used force against Taiwan.
“I doubt Beijing will draw parallels between Greenland and Taiwan,” she said. “The Chinese believe that Taiwan is already and always has been part of China. They will not pay money for it and no government in Taiwan will agree to be bought off.”
Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and a former U.S. Department of Defense official, also said it was “pretty absurd” to think that Trump’s comments on Greenland could emboldening China’s claims to Taiwan.
“But I am struck by the fact that if President Trump refused… to rule out the use of military force to achieve and protect American interests, I think that this type of statement and determination would serve to further deter Beijing from take steps that would prompt the United States to take military action to protect Taiwan,” he said.
“It’s a pretty strong deterrent for China.”
