It’s the first time a top Taiwanese diplomat has made a visit to the U.S. capital since Washington officially recognized China’s communist regime in 1979.
Taiwanese foreign minister Joseph Wu traveled to Washington, D.C., for meetings with senior U.S. officials yesterday — the first time any of the island nation’s top diplomats has made a visit to the U.S. capital since Washington officially recognized China’s communist regime several decades ago.
Taiwanese media outlets, including the Liberty Times, TVBS Taiwan, and UDN, reported on the secret meeting and published images and media of various U.S. and Taiwanese officials entering and leaving the venue. According to the Liberty Times, Taiwan’s five most senior officials — the president, vice president, premier, foreign minister, and defense minister — had previously been prohibited by the U.S. from coming to Washington on official business. Wu’s trip changed that.
A former senior State Department official during the Trump administration called Wu’s trip a “big deal,” adding, in comments to National Review this afternoon, that “this should’ve happened before.”
According to the Financial Times, which reported last week on the plans to hold the talks in Washington as part of a “secret channel” for discussions on Taiwan’s security, the meeting was supposed to remain under wraps for fear of provoking a furious response from Beijing. Previous meetings through this channel were conducted away from Washington, the FT report also said, with the most recent round before yesterday’s meeting taking place in Annapolis in 2020.
Multiple reports by Taiwanese media outlets, however, in addition to the FT’s reporting, seem to have thwarted that drive for secrecy.
According to the Liberty Times, the talks began yesterday morning at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the American Institute in Taiwan — the quasi-official U.S. government entity through which America maintains its unofficial relationship with Taiwan — and lasted the rest of the day.
In addition to Wu, Taiwanese national security council secretary general Wellington Koo, Taiwanese ambassador Bi-Khim Hsiao, and deputy defense minister Bo Hong-hui were part of the Taiwanese delegation. On the U.S. side, deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific Daniel Kritenbrink, White House Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell, and a series of other White House and Pentagon officials also participated, according to the Liberty Times. Most of these officials were photographed by the Taiwanese press, who seemed to have staked out the venue; Wu and Koo even waved at reporters as they left the building, according to UDN.
Wu’s trip to Washington follows a sea change in how the U.S. approaches its relationship with Taiwan. In 2018, Congress passed the Taiwan Travel Act, which encouraged more in-person exchanges between officials from the two countries. Then, in the final days of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo eliminated all of the bureaucratic guidelines constraining U.S. diplomatic engagement with Taiwan, an onerous set of rules that regulated the venue of meetings and display of the Taiwanese flag, among other things. While the decision was the target of media criticism for allegedly constraining the incoming Biden team, Secretary of State Antony Blinken ultimately opted to maintain the elimination of most of those rules, while only putting some of them back in place.
The actual rules limiting high-level visits by representatives of the Taiwanese government are unclear. The former senior State Department official expressed skepticism that there was any sort of formal U.S. blacklist prohibiting official talks with the five most senior Taiwanese government officials.
Either way, the former official said, there should be “no need to keep it secret. This is a strong statement to China.”
The context surrounding the discussions was noteworthy, as recent bilateral engagement between the U.S. and China has faltered amid the spy-balloon scandal, as well as U.S. warnings that Beijing is preparing to send military assistance to Russia. Earlier this month, CIA Director Bill Burns said in a speech that Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to be capable of seizing Taiwan by 2027, though Burns specified that there’s no intelligence yet indicating that Xi has decided to order an invasion.