Following the second of two historic high-level visits by senior U.S. officials to the democratic country of Taiwan, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said in an interview with NPR that Taiwan is not pursuing formal diplomatic relations with the U.S. for now, but that there is “a lot” of room to strengthen ties in other ways, including in the economic, trade, political, and security realms. Increased overtures between the U.S. and Taiwan have caused concern in China, which views Taiwan as being under its sovereignty. In addition to increasing official overtures, U.S. foreign policy experts have openly mulled revisiting the question of U.S.-Taiwan relations following the de-classification of the Six Articles earlier this month. Business leaders and politicians from the EU have also turned increasingly to Taiwan, as Europeans’ skepticism of trade with China has grown. China has not responded well to this apparent global policy shift: the Taiwanese Defense Military has reported 46 incidents of Chinese planes violating Taiwanese airspace in the past nine days, and a hysterical op-ed in the state media organ The Global Times has warned that the possibility of returning U.S. forces to Taiwan would “trigger reunification-by-force-operation”. |
