President Biden’s administration plans to continue “deepening our ties with democratic Taiwan,” according to State Department bulletin that brushes off the latest round of Chinese military saber-rattling.
“We will stand with friends and allies to advance our shared prosperity, security, and values in the Indo-Pacific region — and that includes deepening our ties with democratic Taiwan,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Saturday.
That statement portends worsening tensions with China, which reportedly sent 13 warplanes into the Taiwanese air defense identification zone on Saturday. Chinese Communist officials were enraged by outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s overtures to Taipei, but Biden’s team is poised to keep up the high-profile support.
“We will continue to assist Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability,” Price said. “Our commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid and contributes to the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and within the region.”
The U.S. urges Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic, and economic pressure against Taiwan and instead engage in meaningful dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected representatives. We support a peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues. https://t.co/o2rZL4onJ8
— Ned Price (@statedeptspox) January 24, 2021
The mainland Chinese regime has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan, the last bastion of the government defeated during the 1949 Chinese Communist revolution, but has never controlled the territory. The United States does not recognize Taiwan as an sovereign country, but U.S. strategists regard the island as a crucial link in a chain of islands that restrains the Chinese Communist military’s ability to operate away from the Chinese coast and threaten U.S. forces and other allies.
‘We urge Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic, and economic pressure against Taiwan and instead engage in meaningful dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected representatives,” Price said.
Taiwan’s top diplomat in the United States attended Biden’s inauguration, continuing a trend of U.S.-Taiwanese relations that Beijing had hoped would fade with Pompeo’s departure.
“China’s position is very clear and consistent,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Thursday. “We are firmly against official interactions between the United States and the Taiwan region.”
Taiwanese officials hope to work with the United States and three key allies in the region to deter an invasion from China, by raising the chances that any attack would put Beijing in a one-on-five conflict.
“We need to go deeper, to discuss the security challenges in the region so that the Quad countries or other like-minded countries can join in to discuss more [about] the security challenges in the region,” Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said earlier this month.
