The Ridiculous Ruckus over Taiwan

W hen the State Department announced over the weekend that it would lift all previous guidelines governing the interactions of U.S. officials with their Taiwanese counterparts, the outraged reaction was swift.

Critics alleged that the move would constrain the incoming Biden administration and anger China, and argued that, as CNN’s Bianna Golodryga put it, “a major break in foreign policy in the last days of an administration is not exactly an orderly transition of power.” The backlash echoed the rebukes drawn by last week’s announcement that U.N. ambassador Kelly Craft would be visiting Taiwan this week, which Chinese Communist Party-owned news outlets, and more than a few U.S.-based commentators, called an unnecessary provocation. (That trip was abruptly canceled Tuesday, with the State Department saying that it’s prioritizing the transition over high-level travel.)

But the change in the Taiwan guidelines is not a last-minute effort to constrain Biden or further destabilize the transition of power. In fact, although it’s a positive step for U.S.–Taiwan ties that’s been hailed by Taipei, it does not amount to an earthshaking policy change at all.

“We have been working on revised contact guidance for some time now,” a U.S. official told National Review on Monday, denying that there were political motivations behind the timing of the change. “Sometimes it just takes a while to get these things over the finish line.” The official added that there had been “no change to our overall One-China Policy.”

In short, while some people sensationalized the decision, it was the culmination of a process that began long before the November election, and was undertaken on its merits rather than on the basis of domestic political concerns.

Moreover, it treats Taiwan — a COVID-era beacon of hope that’s been unjustly isolated on the international stage by Beijing — with the respect that it deserves. (There’s a good reason that official Taiwanese reaction was so positive, with Foreign Minister Joseph Wu calling the change a “big thing” and saying that “Taiwan–U.S. relations have been elevated to a global partnership.”)

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived at Foggy Bottom with a mind toward strengthening U.S. relations with Taiwan, and over the past year, the United States has tightened its cooperation with the East Asian democracy in a number of areas, including health care, technology, and trade. Meanwhile, after Congress passed the Taiwan Travel Act in 2018, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Undersecretary of State Keith Krach made high-profile visits to the island. (Beijing, furious, sent fighter jets in Taiwan’s direction each time.)

All of these steps have been taken under the auspices of the One-China Policy established when Washington normalized ties with Beijing in the 1970s. In the ensuing decades, diplomacy with Taiwan has been conducted unofficially, via nonprofit organizations that act as the two governments’ de facto embassies. Washington acknowledges but does not accept that Beijing claims Taiwan as part of China, and it is committed to helping provide for the island’s defense.

The diplomacy made permissible by the removal of the guidelines changes none of that. Calling the documents that constitute the One-China Policy outdated, Dan Blumenthal, an AEI scholar, said nevertheless “there is nothing in those understandings with China that prohibits this kind of activity — I mean, nothing at all.”

Meanwhile, Beijing is, as might be expected, upset at what it calls the State Department’s violation of its own One-China Principle — a standard wholly different from America’s policy, and one to which the U.S. does not adhere. “Any actions which harm China’s core interests will be met with a firm counter-attack and will not succeed,” Zhao Lijian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, threatened.

Needless to say, fears of CCP retaliation should not shape American policy toward Taiwan. Effectively, the State Department is bolstering its support for the democracy not only by removing these onerous restrictions, but also by rejecting the bureaucratic inertia that has long hampered cooperation between Washington and Taipei. During a review process that lasted about a year, career officials did initially put forward their own proposal that revised, though did not eliminate, the Taiwan contact guidelines. Ultimately, Pompeo decided to lift them in their entirety. Indeed, an underappreciated part of Pompeo’s statement notes “that the U.S.-Taiwan relationship need not, and should not, be shackled by self-imposed restrictions of our permanent bureaucracy.”

Already, the change has started to reshape aspects of U.S. diplomacy with Taiwan: In the Netherlands, U.S. ambassador Pete Hoekstra hosted his Taiwanese counterpart for a historically unprecedented meeting at the American embassy shortly after the announcement. And the consequences of Pompeo’s decision could ultimately prove much more far-reaching. Revoking the guidelines means that U.S. diplomats visiting Taiwan now have the ability to consider using their official, diplomatic passports. Craft, had her visit not been canceled, likely still would not have attempted to use hers, as Taiwan’s customs agents would have had to decide to permit her entry that way. But whereas even considering such a move previously violated the State Department’s own guidelines, that obstacle has now been removed.

If anything, the result is a policy that will help rather than hamper the incoming Biden administration. Congress, via the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), has already sketched out the contours of Washington’s unofficial ties with Taipei, and visits by Taiwanese individuals to U.S. government buildings don’t change that policy. In fact, by routing all decisions about U.S.–Taiwan meetings through the nonprofit American Institute in Taiwan, instead of also through the State Department building, the new move counterintuitively makes the relationship more like the one envisioned by the TRA. All that the State Department has done here is remove restrictions that surpass what’s required by the statute, which will give Biden — who voted for the TRA and has generally supported Taiwan’s security in the decades since — that much more room to operate.

Some might argue that the outgoing Trump administration should’ve put these changes in place quietly, without a press release. But announcing the revocation of the guidelines is yet another very public sign of America’s resolve to support Taiwan as it faces increasing Chinese military pressure — and a needed repudiation of the idea that fear of angering China should come before support for the democratic regional ally to which it poses a perpetual, existential threat.