We look, or should be looking, at Beijing’s recent legislative assault on Hong Kong with alarm. The national security laws being cooked up by China’s legislature are flagrant violations of the 1997 “one country, two systems” agreement and present the most serious threat to Hong Kong’s tenuous sovereignty yet.
It is not hyperbole to say that this move by Red China represents one of the most significant developments in international relations in at least the past decade. Nor is it unreasonable to presume that this is an adumbration of even further expansionist ambitions by China, a realization which places Taiwan front and center.
The new law, enacted by China’s National People’s Congress last week ostensibly in reaction to the nearly yearlong protests over Beijing’s steadily tightening grip over Hong Kong, targets terrorism, subversion, and separatism, which is Communist Party of China newspeak for free speech, opposition, and the maintenance of a sovereign democratic system governed by rule of law. The adoption of the draconian new laws was punctuated by Monday’s denial of a permit to hold a candlelight vigil in remembrance of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the first time in 30 years that the vigil has been suppressed.
The boldness and timing of China’s de facto takeover of Hong Kong (taking place in the midst of a global pandemic that has much of the world’s attention focused elsewhere) suggests that a move against nearby Taiwan has been promoted from the realm of possible but realistically inconceivable to entirely probable. While an autonomous Hong Kong has always been a post-imperialist thorn (albeit an economically important one) in China’s side, Taiwan’s very existence as an independent entity has always been a glaring insult to the ruling Chinese Communist Party, which sees it not as a separate nation, but a wayward rebel province to be brought into the fold.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s importance to the United States (militarily, economically, and morally) is considerable and ought not be dismissed, raising the question of whether now might be the time to reexamine the ambiguous official relationship between the two nations.
America’s relations with Taiwan have been guided for four decades by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. The relationship, bolstered somewhat by former President Ronald Reagan with his “six assurances” to Taipei, has been studiously and purposefully opaque. It proscribes, for instance, formal recognition of Taiwan, partly because that was something neither Taipei nor Beijing historically were able to tolerate (both viewed themselves as the “real” China, ergo recognizing something called “Taiwan” injured both sides) and, in larger part, to a desire to avoid needlessly poking the Red Chinese sleeping dragon.
Much has changed in 40 years, however. Taiwan has, over the past decade, quietly relinquished its claim to be the official government-in-exile of a free China. Cultural, political, and even linguistic differences have grown between the two Chinas (to use a still-politically incendiary phrase) to the point where it is now not merely political and legal divergence which separates them.
As far as not prodding the sleeping dragon goes, it is fairly safe to say that the dragon is already awake and making its nest in Hong Kong. All of this points to a world in which revisiting the Taiwan Relations Act makes considerable sense.
Which is not to say that it is without risk, and much of that risk is more focused in Washington than in Beijing. Ensuring Taiwan’s defense would require a multilateral treaty, and President Trump is not known for his affinity of multinational treaties. Moreover, there is real concern that his focus in terms of international relations is commercial, to the exclusion of other important, but more abstract, objectives; i.e., that he would willingly abandon Taiwan if that were the price of a trade deal with China.
This is all further exacerbated by a weakness the current administration, unfortunately, and unnecessarily, shares with the Obama administration, which is the lack of a strong foreign affairs presence, having shed itself of the likes of Nikki Haley and even John Bolton. Mike Pompeo is a skilled and able operator but limited in his scope. Trump could benefit from a Henry Kissinger or a Condoleezza Rice but has not availed himself of such talent.
Despite the pratfalls, America owes a moral obligation to Taiwan to consider strengthening existing arrangements in light of current developments. The conventional wisdom is to approach a problem the size of Taiwan by ignoring it. But we may not be able to for much longer. As Kissinger pointed out in his magisterial book on the topic, On China, the Taiwan Relations Act binds only the American president. Red China has never acknowledged it. Says Kissinger, “It would be dangerous to equate acquiescence to circumstance with agreement for the indefinite future. That a pattern of action has been accepted for a number of years does not obviate its long-term risks.”
Just ask Hong Kong about that.
Kelly Sloan (@KVSloan25) is a Denver-based public affairs consultant and columnist.
