State Media Says China Must ‘Wage Resolute Struggle’ Against Donald Trump’s Views on Taiwan
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| U.S. President-elect Donald Trump looks on during a rally at the DeltaPlex Arena in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Dec. 9, 2016 |
Donald Trump hinted Sunday that the U.S. may not be bound in the future by the understanding that Taiwan is part of “one China” — casting doubt upon a concept that has been a key part of Sino-U.S. relations for decades, and threatening to send those relations into a tailspin.
While Beijing has yet to issue an official reaction, an editorial in the Chinese edition of the state-linked Global Times on Monday rebuked Trump, saying, “the One China policy cannot be traded.” China “cannot be bullied” and must “wage resolute struggle” against the President-elect, it added.
An article in the English-language edition of the Global Times, also published Monday, cited an academic who called the President-elect “inexperienced in sensitive and complicated issues” with “very superficial” knowledge of Sino-U.S. relations.
“The Taiwan question is not negotiable,” Li Haidong, a professor of China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, was quoted as saying.
China and Taiwan effectively split after China’s civil war in 1949, when routed Nationalists fled across the Taiwan Strait to the island. Since that time, Beijing has considered Taiwan a renegade province, to be reclaimed by force if necessary.
On Dec. 2, the U.S. President-elect angered the Chinese top brass by accepting a phone call from the President of Taiwan, the first direct contact between leaders of the U.S. and the self-governing island since formal diplomatic relations were severed in 1979.
Trump has been unrepentant about the call, and went further on this week’s Fox News Sunday by saying that the U.S. would only continue to recognize that Taiwan was part of China if significant concessions were wrested from Beijing.
“I fully understand the ‘one China’ policy, but I don’t know why we have to be bound by a ‘one China’ policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” Trump told Fox.
Trump said China was not cooperating with the U.S. on its valuation of its currency, on denuclearizing North Korea and on resolving territorial claims the South China Sea. He also said China should not be “dictating” who he could speak to on the telephone.
According to Professor Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Beijing’s Renmin University, Trump’s remarks are likely an idle threat.
“I don’t think he will recognize Taiwan,” he tells TIME. “Maybe he’s trying to bargain more benefits regarding trade or the economy so he says very serious things about Taiwan to frighten the Chinese [leadership]. I think it’s his diplomatic strategy.”
Of course, Beijing’s reaction may be to strike back. Bilateral trade between the U.S. and China was valued at $558 billion last year, and China is world’s largest holder of U.S. Treasury bonds — worth $1.19 trillion. Taiwan is even more reliant on China, which accounts for two-fifths of all its exports, bringing in some $130 billion each year.
According to Sheng Jiuyuan, dean of the Taiwan Research Center at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Trump’s comments will have a “serious impact” on Sino-U.S. relations as “one China” is the “cornerstone that maintains cross-straits stability.”
“Trump is using businessman’s trick to deal with a sensitive political issue,” he says. “But that might cause a confrontation between China and Taiwan. Trump will have to take responsibility should this happen.”
— With reporting by Zhang Chi / Beijing
Source: Time
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