It’s time to start correcting some errors of long standing, and it may be (it is too soon to be confident of this) that President-Elect Donald Trump is beginning to do that with his telecon with the President of the RoC.
“The one-China policy is the cornerstone of the healthy development of China-US relations and we hope this political foundation will not be interfered with or damaged,” [Chinese Foreign Minister Yi] Wang was quoted as saying.
This illustrates one of those errors. The Republic of China is separate from the People’s Republic of China—that’s why Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang followers and lots of others left the mainland for the island of Taiwan. They wanted no part of Mao Tse-tung’s butcherous communist state, including declining to be a part of that.
[RoC President Ing-wen] Tsai also told Trump that she hoped the US would support Taiwan in its participation in international affairs, the office said, in an apparent reference to China’s efforts to isolate Taiwan from global institutions such as the United Nations.
It said the two also discussed “promoting domestic economic development and strengthening national defense[.]”
Indeed. We need to be plusing up the RoC’s ability to defend itself and loudly repeating our commitment to the nation’s defense, especially against the backdrop of the PRC’s naked aggression in the East and South China Seas and its occupation of the latter.
Of course, the Obama administration objects to this apparent show of non-timidity. A carefully anonymous “senior Obama administration official,” who’s not supposed to be talking at all “because of the sensitive diplomatic relations involved” complained
The White House learned of the conversation after it had taken place
No hypocrisy here at all. Its not at all like Congress learning of the White House’s immigration moves with “refugees” that Australia had rejected only after the fact. Nossir. Never mind that the President-Elect, nor does any American, have any obligation to seek the President’s permission to make or take a telephone call.
The administration isn’t the only gang with trouble with this call, though. The whole of the Left is up in arms; their dismay is exemplified by this from Bonnie Glaser of the Center for Strategic and International Studies:
I think privately, they [the PRC] will definitely seek to educate this incoming president and ensure that he understands the sensitivity of Taiwan[.]
Because an American President should be taking guidance—education, even—from America’s enemies. Glaser (and the PRC) are right, though, that matters relating to the RoC are sensitive–just not for her reasons. The island nation’s freedom is hanging on a thread.
Along these same lines, I look forward to the new President Trump hosting the Dalai Lama at a State Dinner sometime this winter.
A couple of small nits from the article at the link, too: it’s the Republic of China; the island on which the nation sits is Taiwan. Also, the citizens of the RoC have been increasing their push for independence from the People’s Republic of China over the last several years; Tsai Ing-wen was just elected President of the RoC in no small part because of her and her party’s long-standing push for independence.
In sum, we absolutely need to tighten and strengthen our relationship with the RoC, and that includes working closely with them politically, economically, and militarily.