Article: China says US has ‘gravely backpedaled’ on Taiwan
This article is centred on China’s response to the US backtracking on their lack of support for Taiwan. As the article cites, China’s foreign ministry took issue with a US government fact-sheet that removed the line that once stated that the United States does not support Taiwan’s independence. Although a seemingly sneaky move, it marks a shift in US – China relations amidst many other things straining their bilateral relationship, such as the ongoing Trade War. The US, although never officially supporting Taiwan as an independent state, has aided Taiwan nonetheless with arms. The lack of support for Taiwan was a political device to seal trade relations with China, and given that they’re already in turmoil amidst the 10% tax issued by Trump following CHina’s counter-tariffs, it makes sense why the US is in a position to backtrack on that agreement. Taiwan’s government has already addressed this move by the US, and showed positive reactions to the global hegemon’s support. In fact, the article mentions that the US State Department did this exact thing in 2022 under Biden, but this removal of that line was short lived as protests from China provoked Washington to add it back to the sheet. Trump as a leader is less likely to go back on this action, as is seen with his more hawkish foreign policy that is set on transactional benefits as opposed to Biden’s that can be argued as more wasteful of American resources. If we look at this from the perspective of the US-CHina tech race, Taiwan was once a great asset that provided semiconductor chips. Taiwan, in And with China’s AI advancements with Deep Seek setting the American chat-GPT to shame, it is plausible the US is trying to vamp up trade-relations with Taiwan in order to grasp those chips again to advance the American technological scene. Overall, the trade-war that dates back to Trump’s initial tariffs in 2018, can be broken down as seeing one country apply economic hard power to coerce the other, with the other country (China) countering that econ. hard power with their own as retaliation. That is essentially what defines the trading relations between the two as a “Trade War.” If Trump is to lean in on stronger relations with Taiwan for trade-purposes, it does go against Trump’s pledged “america first” vision, further showing that his slogan was much more of a campaigning device as opposed to a realistic foreign policy approach.