Explained: Why the Taiwan issue is so dangerous for US-China relations

President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping held a lengthy and candid talk about Taiwan on Thursday, as tensions between Washington and Beijing continue to rise, despite Biden's earlier hope of resolving the world's most important country-to-country relationship.

The two presidents did decide to start planning their first face-to-face summit since Xi is reluctant to travel due to the Covid-19 outbreak. As a result of which many issues were hashed out.

However, one of the most contentious issues turned out to be Taiwan. The situation has become a major source of contention as US officials worry about an impending Chinese move on the autonomous island. Additionally, Beijing has issued warnings in response to a potential visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the Biden administration is making a concerted effort to defuse the situation before it gets out of hand.

Why Taiwan has Re-emerged as a flashpoint

Taiwan has re-emerged as a flashpoint in U.S.-China relations for three fundamental reasons. First, the Taiwan issue was never fully resolved and the two sides attempted to set it aside to be delicately and pragmatically managed over time. Second, despite such attempts, Taiwan was never truly set aside and has long loomed as the central issue in U.S.-China relations. Exacerbating this second reason is a third: The Taiwan issue has been the constant subject of misperception and misinterpretation by both Washington and Beijing.

First, Taiwan is an issue that defies resolution: Thinking that permeated Washington and Beijing in the 1970s and 1980s was that the issue would naturally take care of itself over time as long as both sides could take the long view. Yet neither Washington nor Beijing foresaw how the Taiwan issue would be fundamentally altered by remarkable transformations on the island itself. Taiwan’s polity evolved in the late 1980s and 1990s from an austere authoritarian regime to emerge in the new millennium as one of the world’s most vibrant democracies. This complete political makeover discombobulated Beijing’s cross-strait calculus and pushed Washington to view Taipei in a far more favorable and sympathetic light. Phrased differently, Taiwan’s on-island “status quo” has undergone significant change over the decades.

Second, Taiwan has remained a central and contentious issue in U.S.-China relations: While China publicly prioritized a policy of peaceful unification since 1979, it never renounced the use of force. Beijing has viewed the democratization of Taiwan with skepticism and alarm, especially during island-wide elections, and when the Democratic Progressive Party — the political party it considers pro-independence — has been in office.

Moreover, the “one country, two systems” solution — a concept Beijing has touted for several decades as a framework that would allow the island to formally reconcile with the mainland while retaining a high degree of autonomy — rings hollow to Taiwan’s people. This is especially true after recent events in Hong Kong, where Beijing has cracked down harshly on basic freedoms and vigorously suppressed dissent.

Third, misperceptions over Taiwan have accumulated over decades in both Washington and Beijing: Back in 1972, Beijing erroneously believed that Washington had irreversibly committed to its own “one China principle,” which maintains that Taiwan is a province of China. From Beijing’s perspective, this meant that the United States would one day walk away from Taipei for good. Washington, meanwhile, simply acknowledged Beijing’s principle, believing its own “one China policy” — by which the United States “opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; does not support Taiwan independence; and expects cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means” — to be contingent upon Beijing pursuing a peaceful rapprochement with Taipei.

Meanwhile, Washington continues to sell arms to the island and to reiterate its commitments to support Taipei under the provisions of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA). China interprets these sales as violating assurances that it believes the United States repeatedly gave to China, most notably in the 1982 U.S.-China Communique when the United States affirmed its intention to gradually reduce arms sales to Taiwan. China perceives the TRA as evidence that the United States never actually intended to abide by its “one-China policy” since the act — in addition to bilateral joint communiques of 1972, 1978 and 1982 — has enabled Washington and Taipei to maintain a vibrant quasi-official relationship for more than 40 years.

What's next?

The 2022 Shangri-La Dialogue underscores that Taiwan remains a contentious and volatile issue between the United States and China. Although the speeches and conversations in Singapore bring to mind Winston Churchill’s pithy aphorism that “jaw jaw is better than war war,” the repeated use of the term “status quo” has ominous overtones and the associated finger pointing highlights the urgency of addressing the underlying mistrust vis-à-vis Taiwan. It is also important to note that while Taiwan was the subject of much discussion at the dialogue, no Taiwanese participant was invited to present formal remarks because of political sensitivities.

The United States and China need to get beyond exchanging talking points and trading accusations if they are to de-escalate tensions over Taiwan and stabilize the situation in the Taiwan Strait. A basic but important initial step would be to provide greater clarity on what each side means by “status quo.”

The most important and most relevant party is of course the island of Taiwan itself, which likely also has its own understanding of what constitutes the “status quo” and view on who is seeking to change it.