For anxious Taiwan, Trump’s silence after Xi talks is best possible outcome

Before this week’s summit between the Chinese and US presidents, Taiwan had been cast as the anxious bystander.

Observers suggested that Taipei feared the unpredictable and transactional Donald Trump might overturn Washington’s longstanding support for the island democracy, which Beijing claims as a breakaway province, during Thursday and Friday’s talks.

But while the US president hailed his “great” meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, when the leaders emerged on Thursday afternoon, he took an uncustomarily muted approach as he sidestepped questions on Taiwan. A White House readout of the meeting published later also omitted mention of the country.

Trump may have been reading the room. Shortly before the meeting, Xi took a firm tone, declaring that “Taiwan independence” and peace in the Taiwan strait were “incompatible”.

“If it is handled properly, the relationship between the two countries [China and the US] will remain generally stable,” Xi said. “If it is not handled well, the two countries will collide or even conflict, pushing the entire Sino-US relationship into a very dangerous situation.”

Wen-Ti Sung, a non-resident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, said Xi’s tone was “surprisingly firm for summit diplomacy”. That was intended to signal to Trump that the “Taiwan issue remains the reddest of red lines” for Beijing. Xi’s message was “get Taiwan right and we are friends; get Taiwan wrong and we might become foes before you know it”, Sung said.

Taiwan’s ministry of foreign affairs issued a swift and firm retort to Xi, saying that: “The Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to one another.”

But beyond this customary sparring, Taipei will be quietly pleased at the meeting’s outcome, not least the silence from Washington, according to William Yang, a senior analyst focusing on China for the Crisis Group.

While Trump and Xi are to meet again on Friday, Yang believes that will be focused on trade and investment deals, and Taipei may have already breathed a “sigh of relief”.

“[Taipei] would welcome Taiwan being mentioned as little as possible,” he said. “They’d rather have Taiwan not mentioned than Taiwan mentioned in a way that marks a departure from longstanding US policy.”