TRUMP IN TAIWAN

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen

The 10-minute telephone conversation between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. president-elect Donald J. Trump on December 2  was the first such conversation between a sitting president in Taiwan and a U.S. president or president-elect since Washington broke official diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979.

The reactions ranged worldwide, from consternation at Trump’s breaking with longstanding policy to hopes for deeper relations between the United States and the democratic island nation.

Most analysis of the call overlooks a crucial component: Tsai’s own calculations and the domestic reaction on Taiwan.  That’s what we’ll discuss here.

With much of Western media taking the lead in presuming to interpret Beijing’s ire at news of the unprecedented congratulatory call from Tsai, the incident and its significance were quickly blown out of proportion.

So much so, in fact, that Beijing, which regards Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting unification — by force if necessary — felt compelled to turn up the rhetoric a notch after a rather mild initial response.

Taking a cue from the hyperbole in many Western media, ultra-nationalistic Chinese media soon followed suit, with the Global Times going as far as to call Trump’s team “pigs,” and suggest the need for a rapid buildup of China’s strategic nuclear stockpile to counter any “provocation” by President Trump on issues such as Taiwan.

In the week since the call, the hundreds of articles written about and interviews given on the subject worldwide have largely focused on the mechanics of the call — Was it planned in advance? If so, who was involved? What is known, according to well-placed sources, is that Beijing did not have foreknowledge of the call. (Poor Henry Kissinger, who happened to be in China at the time, must have been treated to a heated question or two.)

As is often the case, little effort was made to analyze why Taiwan’s first female president, in office since May 20 and brought to power in January via democratic election, was willing to place a call that, if Trump picked up at the other end of the line, was certain to spark some controversy.

Even less was said, with a few notable exceptions, about reactions in Taiwan, particularly its 23 million citizens, who far too often in the rare instances of international attention are denied a voice of their own – as if all of them were little more than insentient subjects to the implacable waves of history or the dictates of decision makers in Washington and Beijing.

By denying them agency and negating their right to self-determination — both the end results of sustained Chinese propaganda and longstanding diplomatic processes that refuse to acknowledge the facts on the ground — this incomplete analysis of the U.S.-Taiwan-China relationship often transforms the peace-loving people of a successful liberal-democracy into potential disruptors of the great power stability that supposedly benefits us all.

It also portrays anyone who breaks with longstanding practices, as Trump did, as reckless and dangerous — hence media references to Trump’s “weekend antics,” describing him as a “diplomatic rookie.”

Worse, by denying Taiwanese a voice, we often suggest — or encourage the suggestion in some circles — that Taiwanese leaders have nefarious motives whose effects cannot but be detrimental to the continuation of stable international relations.

So — Why did Tsai place the call?

Several factors may have led Tsai to place the call to Trump, which it should be clear did not occur on a whim and required prior consultations by both sides.

And yet, in the millions of words written and spoken in the past week as pundits sought to find meaning in this break from the norm, very few attempts were made to identify and analyze those motivations.

It was far easier — or a better story, perhaps — to ascribe the call (and subsequent Tweets) to Trump’s recklessness and inexperience, or to blow the incident out of proportion and thus give it a transformative potential that has little, if any, relationship with reality.

Why would Tsai, president of a democratic country facing a constant military threat from nuclear-armed authoritarian China and head of the Taiwan-centric Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), risk undermining the fragile stability in the Taiwan Strait by placing a call that was sure to cause some ripples in Beijing, which is ever-watchful of any signs of U.S. involvement in what it regards as its internal affairs?

One thing is certain: Tsai is not her predecessor from the DPP, Chen Shui-bian, whose risk-taking presidency between 2000 and 2008 is often regarded as having soured relations with both the United States, Taiwan’s main security guarantor, and China.

Whatever the merits of such accusations against Chen, there is reason to believe that the Tsai administration has a much better awareness of the limits to what it can achieve and a better sense of Beijing’s red lines.

Starting with her election campaign in 2015, Tsai has enjoyed constructive relations with U.S. officials and has done much to reassure the Obama administration that she does not intend to cause trouble in the Taiwan Strait.  Moreover, the Tsai administration has committed to honoring the more than 20 agreements that were signed with China during the Ma Ying-jeou administration (2008-2016).

Undoubtedly, her refusal to give in to Beijing’s demands that she acknowledge the so-called “1992 consensus” and subscribe to “one China” has angered Beijing.  This is reflective of the mandate that was given her by democratic means — support for unification in Taiwan has been steadily dropping over the past two decades and is at an all-time single-digit low.

Unable to break from its nationalistic rhetoric, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has painted itself into a corner regarding the situation with Taiwan. Thus, despite Tsai’s early overtures to China, Beijing’s response has been to narrow Taiwan’s international space, blocking Taiwan’s ability to participate in international organizations despite strong U.S. lobbying on its behalf.

As Beijing tries to limit Taiwan’s international space, Taipei cannot afford to remain static: it must push back so as to reposition itself within the confines of an acceptable “status quo.”

While the phone call was largely insufficient as an indicator of future U.S. policy vis-à-vis Taiwan and China, it nevertheless had symbolic value that helped to assuage fears of abandonment, the eternal nightmare of small allies facing rising revisionist powers.

Tsai also needed to demonstrate, if only for the purpose of domestic politics, that she was willing to take calculated risks to defend the nation’s honor and, just as importantly, that she could persuade the U.S. side to play along.

It was a gamble, no doubt, which was bound to spark reactions in Beijing. However, if the status quo becomes untenable — and China’s efforts to isolate Taiwan in recent months may well have encouraged such perceptions — the weaker party is bound to take some risks to shake things up.

While international reactions to the call abroad have been diverse (though inexplicably unfavorable to Taiwan in certain liberal media, where the democracy is often regarded as a quasi-rogue state), back in Taiwan the response has been highly optimistic, resulting even in bipartisan support in a country where political division is, sadly, far too often the norm.

For most people in Taiwan, from street vendors to politicians, the response has been positive: acknowledgment, at last, of their country’s existence and of the legitimacy of their elected president, by the leader of the world’s great superpower.

However, for the majority of Taiwanese the call was treated with guarded optimism; a welcome sign, undoubtedly, but far too early to indicate a sudden shift in U.S. policy. Very few people treated Trump’s use of the word “Taiwan,” rather than its official designation, the Republic of China, as anything other than convenient shorthand.

The Taiwanese are above all pragmatic and conscious, after decades of isolation, that the road to full recognition as a sovereign state will be a long one.

Thus, from a domestic standpoint, the call’s immediate repercussions were likely to boost Tsai’s image with the public as her honeymoon period comes to a close and her support ratings drop accordingly.

Even opposition Kuomintang Party (KMT) chairlady Hung Hsiu-chu, Beijing’s favorite in the 2016 elections and a strong proponent of closer ties with China, had positive things to say about the call. As long as the development was “good for Taiwan,” she said, she was “pleased to see there is good communication between Taiwan and the United States,” adding that continued U.S. support for Taiwan was “a good thing.”

A few lonely voices in the KMT nevertheless tried to raise questions about the nature of the call and perhaps remove some of the shine off Tsai’s performance. One of their baseless speculations is that Trump may have agreed to take the call in order to secure a hotel deal in northern Taiwan (if money were the sole determinant of his decisions, he can make a lot more of that in China).

Yet not even they disputed the fundamental positives of the call.  Taiwan politicians of every stripe are joining the widely popular reception to the unprecedented call.

For everyone on this island country recognizes that the Tsai-Trump call has given dignity to a people who have long strived for their rightful place among the community of nations.

Michael Cole is Editor for the Thinking Taiwan Foundation, and is a former analyst on China at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in Ottawa.