Deterring a Chinese takeover of Taiwan should be a high priority for the incoming Trump administration. China has long claimed Taiwan as its own and insisted that unification is a historical inevitability. The People’s Liberation Army recently ringed Taiwan with a major military and Coast Guard exercise to demonstrate its sovereignty claim and to warn Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te against pursuing independence.

Such military operations are designed to intimidate the people of Taiwan. Ever since former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited the island in August 2022, Taiwan has faced unrelenting pressure from Chinese military operations. At the same time, Beijing has stepped up its political campaign through the U.N. and in its diplomatic relations to seek political acceptance for its claim of sovereignty over Taiwan. Even as the U.S. and many of its allies criticize these Chinese actions, they often fail to grasp the strategy behind them: Beijing is laying the legal groundwork to use force against Taiwan eventually.

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During China’s display of military power in the Taiwan Strait last month, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense announced that for the first time the Chinese Coast Guard — an element of its armed forces — “conducted law enforcement patrols in the waters surrounding Taiwan.” To challenge Taiwan’s authority to control the waters around its territory, China sent three Coast Guard flotillas to conduct what it referred to as “a practical action to lawfully enforce control over Taiwan island in accordance with the one China principle.” These were the kind of law enforcement exercises that only Taiwan’s Coast Guard normally has the right to undertake, such as boarding and inspecting foreign vessels. The intent was to signal clearly China’s claim to sovereignty over the island.

A likely precursor to any use of force by Beijing will be a public assertion of sovereignty over Taiwan. By encircling the island with its law enforcement patrols and publicizing those patrols from the Ministry of National Defense, China essentially announced to the world that its campaign to control the island of Taiwan has moved to a new and more dangerous phase.

Beijing has long claimed that there is one China, Taiwan is a part of China and the Chinese Communist Party is the only legitimate government of all of China. This is Beijing’s so-called “One China principle,” which the U.S. has consistently refused to endorse.

American policy since 1950 has been that the sovereign status of Taiwan is undetermined, though it has shrouded the policy in ambiguous diplomatic language meant to smooth over differences and allow the two countries to develop stable relations. Further, American policy insists that the eventual resolution of sovereignty should be left to the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to peacefully decide without coercion or the threat of force.

Congress has also played a role in developing America’s Taiwan policy. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act urges the U.S. to make defensive weapons available to Taiwan and states that Congress would consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to regional peace and security and of grave concern to America. Collectively, these views are known (somewhat confusingly) as America’s “One China policy.” And although the U.S. is the most vocal nation in distinguishing its policy from Beijing’s “One China principle,” other countries quietly hold similar views.

Recent Chinese Coast Guard operations challenging Taiwan’s right to control the waters around its territory pose a direct challenge to American policy and create a dilemma for all nations that desire to see Taiwan’s status be resolved peacefully and without coercion. Accepting the actions of China’s Coast Guard as lawful is to accept Beijing’s “One China principle” and to acquiesce in China’s claim that Taiwan falls under its sovereignty.

Furthermore, to accept that Taiwan is under Chinese sovereignty is to accept Beijing’s assertion that any future use of force would be a purely domestic matter — to allow the Coast Guard patrols to go unchallenged seals Taiwan’s fate. But to oppose the Chinese Coast Guard’s actions poses an open challenge to China and risks destabilizing blowback.

American policy should focus on reducing the risk of further escalation even at the cost of potential instability in the U.S.-China relationship. Accordingly, the U.S. should publicly condemn Beijing’s recent actions as destabilizing to regional peace and stability, call upon like-minded states to make similar statements, and reinforce the American commitment to a peaceful resolution by advancing Taiwan’s capacity to defend itself and our own capacity to support its defense, if necessary.

Similarly, it is time for the U.S. to actively and publicly counter Beijing’s political campaign in the United Nations and elsewhere, through which it distorts the meaning of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 2758. The official record shows that in passing the resolution in 1971, countries intended only to transfer the China seat in the General Assembly and the Security Council from the Republic of China (Taiwan’s formal name) to the People’s Republic of China. There is no evidence for China’s claim that the resolution establishes, as a matter of international law, Beijing’s “One China principle.”

In fact, in 1971, then-Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai noted that given the text of the resolution, “the status of Taiwan is not yet decided.” The Chinese government has likewise used Resolution 2758 and bilateral normalization agreements with other member states to falsely claim that its “One China principle” is a settled fact.

Like the military exercises, Beijing’s persistent efforts to embed its beliefs in U.N. statements are aimed at winning acceptance of its proposition that Taiwan is part of China and a settled issue in international law. This is far from the truth, but convincing other nations to go along may allow Beijing to claim that its use of force to achieve unification should be considered lawful. The Trump administration should play a proactive role in refuting these mischaracterizations and the flawed claims of Chinese diplomats.

The failure to firmly counter Chinese military and diplomatic actions risks signaling that the U.S. will tolerate a future in which the people of Taiwan are forced to accept Beijing’s rule. Hong Kong’s experience stands as a stark example of the dangers of this path. Accepting that Taiwan is already sovereign Chinese territory could have the unintended consequence of undermining deterrence and provoking a massive conflict.

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Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te delivers a speech during National Day celebrations.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te will visit the self-governing island’s allies in the South Pacific, where rival China has been seeking diplomatic inroads.

The Foreign Ministry announced Friday that Lai would travel from Nov. 30 to Dec. 6 to the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau.

The trip comes against the background of Chinese loans, grants and security cooperation treaties with Pacific island nations that have aroused major concern in the U.S., New Zealand, Australia and others over Beijing's moves to assert military, political and economic control over the region.

Taiwan’s government has yet to confirm whether Lai will make a stop in Hawaii, although such visits are routine and unconfirmed Taiwanese media reports say he will stay for more than one day.

Under pressure from China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory and threatens to annex it by force if needed, Taiwan has just 12 formal diplomatic allies. However, it retains strong contacts with dozens of other nations, including the U.S., its main source of diplomatic and military support.

China has sought to whittle away traditional alliances in the South Pacific, signing a security agreement with the Solomon Islands shortly after it broke ties with Taiwan and winning over Nauru just weeks after Lai's election in January. Since then, China has been pouring money into infrastructure projects in its South Pacific allies, as it has around the world, in exchange for political support.

China objects strongly to such U.S. stopovers by Taiwan's leaders, as well as visits to the island by leading American politicians, terming them as violations of U.S. commitments not to afford diplomatic status to Taiwan after Washington switched formal recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.

With the number of its diplomatic partners declining under Chinese pressure, Taiwan has redoubled efforts to take part in international forums, even from the sidelines. It has also fought to retain what diplomatic status it holds, including refusing a demand from South Africa last month that it move its representative office in its former diplomatic ally out of the capital.

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Taiwan's president to visit Pacific allies, no details on US transits

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te will visit Taipei's three remaining diplomatic allies in the Pacific on a trip starting at the end of the month, his office said on Friday, but the government declined to give details on U.S. transit stops.

Taiwanese presidents usually use visits to allied countries to make what are officially stop-overs in the United States, Taiwan's most important international backer and arms supplier, which frequently anger Beijing.

On two occasions in the past two years China staged military drills around Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory, after presidential or vice-presidential stopovers in the United States.

On those stopovers, Taiwanese presidents often meet with friendly politicians and give speeches. Reuters reported last week that Lai was planning to stop off in Hawaii and maybe the U.S. territory of Guam while he was in the Pacific.

Asked repeatedly by reporters at a news conference for details on the stop overs, Deputy Taiwan Foreign Minister Tien Chung-kwang said they were in the planning stages and would be announced at an "appropriate time".

"But there is a principle, which is that they are handled with safety, dignity, convenience and comfort" in mind, said Tien.

China will do all it can to stymie the trip - Lai's first abroad since being inaugurated in May - but Taiwan won't be deterred, he added.

"We won't dance to their tune. We will do what we have to do and what we plan."

Two sources familiar with the situation said details of the U.S. part of the trip would likely only come a day or so before Lai departed.

Speaking in Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian did not directly address the prospect of Lai transitting the United States, but said the "one-China principle" was the general consensus of the international community.

'LONG TERM PARTNER'

Of the 12 countries which maintain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, three are in the Pacific - Palau, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu - and Lai will go to all of them starting from Nov. 30, his office said.

His official schedule has him then arriving in the Marshall Islands only in the following week, on Dec. 3, without saying where he would be in the intervening period.

The Pacific island nations visits are also important as China is competing for influence with the United States there and has been gradually whittling away at the number of countries in the region who retain ties with Taiwan. In January, tiny Nauru switched relations back to Beijing.

Palau, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu all put out statements on Friday saying they welcomed Lai's visit.

"As a long-term partner and good friend of the Marshall Islands, we look forward to the warmly receiving President Lai," the office of President Hilda Heine said on its Facebook page.

China has ramped up its military activities around Taiwan in the past five years, including holding another round of war games last month it said were a warning to "separatist acts".

Taiwan's government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims and says it has a right to engage with other countries and for its leaders to make foreign trips.

In August of last year, China held a day of military drills around Taiwan after then-vice president Lai returned from the United States, where he officially made only stopovers but gave speeches on his way to and from Paraguay.

In April of last year, China also held war games around Taiwan in anger at a U.S. trip by then-president Tsai Ing-wen, who met then-U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles. In 2017 and 2019, Tsai stopped in Hawaii during her visits to Pacific allies.

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