China must not use Taiwan’s impending presidential election as an occasion for “additional military pressure or coercion,” according to President Joe Biden’s team, which plans to send an “unofficial delegation” to encourage the island’s democracy.
“The election is part of a normal routine democratic process,” a senior administration official told reporters in the lead-up to Saturday’s election. “Beijing will be the provocateur should it choose to respond with additional military pressure or coercion.”
Taiwanese voters on Saturday will cast their ballots in a presidential election expected to come down to a choice between incumbent Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te of the Democratic People’s Party and New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-ih, the candidate for the Kuomintang, which has a pro-Beijing reputation. Chinese Communist Party officials have warned voters that Lai’s victory could raise the odds of a war, but Biden’s team sought to blunt that pressure.
“We oppose any outside interference or influence in Taiwan’s elections,” the senior administration official said. “Of course, the United States does not take sides in these elections (and) does not have a favorite or preferred candidate. Regardless of who is elected, our policy toward Taiwan will remain the same and our strong unofficial relationship will also continue.”
Chinese officials have claimed sovereignty over the island throughout the ensuing decades, despite never having ruled there, but Taiwanese authorities have never acquiesced to that claim. In that context, Beijing bristled even at a generic show of support for the integrity of Taiwan’s presidential election.
“Elections in the Taiwan region are purely China’s internal affairs that brook no external interference,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Thursday. “China deplores and strongly opposes the US’ unwarranted comments on Taiwan’s elections. I need to stress that the Taiwan question is at the very core of China’s core interests and is the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations.”
Taiwan is the last bastion of the nationalist Republic of China government overthrown in the civil war that ended with a communist victory in 1949. Under President Jimmy Carter, the United States severed an alliance with the Republic of China that dated back to the Second World War and transferred the U.S. Embassy from Taipei to Beijing, but the United States has maintained a friendly “unofficial” relationship with Taiwan — including the regular provision of weapons and an assurance that “the United States has not agreed to take any position regarding sovereignty over Taiwan,” as President Ronald Reagan’s administration put it.
“We support cross-strait dialogue, and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means free from coercion in a manner that is acceptable to the people on both sides of the street,” the senior administration official reiterated. “We do not take a position on the ultimate resolution of cross-strait differences provided they result peacefully.”
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The details of the unofficial delegation are “still being decided,” the official said, but the visit will take place at some point after the election. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taipei in 2022 marked the beginning of a new era in Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, but Biden’s team argued this week that a visit by former officials of the sort they have in mind is standard practice.
“We often send these high-level unofficial delegations of former government officials to Taipei,” the official added. “We have a decadeslong tradition of doing so. This is nothing new. … Neither of these, over the past several years, were viewed as escalatory by the (People’s Republic of China).”
