U.S. Tilt to Taipei Is Seen as Risky

More than two decades after formally abandoning Taiwan in favor of China, the United States is once again openly cozying up to the island, defying the spirit of agreements with Beijing, ignoring its protests and risking further setbacks in an already tense relationship.

“The Bush administration is more supportive of Taiwan than any administration since the break in relations in 1979, which has been reflected in a series of dramatic demonstrations over the last four months,” said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and co-editor of the quarterly Journal of Democracy.

The latest evidence is Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian’s scheduled arrival in New York today for a three-day “transit” stopover en route to Latin America. Chen is scheduled to meet with leaders of Congress--once a taboo--as well as visit the New York Stock Exchange and tour the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

On the way back from Latin America next week, Chen is to make a second, two-day stop in Houston, where Texas Republican Tom DeLay, the House majority whip, will play host to him at a Houston Astros baseball game and a steakhouse dinner.

Chen’s visit, a breakthrough in bilateral relations, comes just weeks after President Bush’s impromptu and controversial pledge that the U.S. would do “whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself.” That vow was followed by Washington’s offer of a robust new arms package for the vulnerable island, 100 miles off the mainland, which Beijing considers a renegade province.

Bush’s assertion last month included a promise to use military force if necessary and represented a dramatic departure from a decades-old policy based on “strategic ambiguity.”

The president’s words were striking in part because of his father’s role as the first American envoy to China, an appointment which underscored the U.S. abandonment of Taiwan. But the current Bush administration has already gone much further in pursuing Taiwan than even the government in Taipei anticipated.

“Bush is much more risk-prone than Clinton on this issue,” said Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, a specialist in U.S.-Taiwan relations at Georgetown University.

But the White House’s still-evolving policy, which has unfolded in a series of actions rather than a formal pronouncement, could have major consequences down the road, U.S. experts warn.

“It will generate some sort of response from China. Flaunting relations with Taiwan and rubbing China’s nose in it won’t help either U.S.-China relations or cross-strait relations between China and Taiwan. These things are not forgotten,” said Robert L. Suettinger of the Rand Corp.’s Washington office.

In 1995, a landmark transit visit to the United States by then-President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan to visit his alma mater, Cornell University, triggered China’s fury--and months of Chinese war games and missile tests--before tensions abated.

Now, the repercussions from Chen’s visit may already have begun. Last week, China formally charged a Chinese American business professor at City University of Hong Kong with spying for Taiwan. Li Shaomin, who has been held since Feb. 25, is one of very few U.S. citizens to face espionage charges in China.

Officially, the Bush administration has reaffirmed long-standing U.S. policy, which recognizes only one China--with the implicit expectation that China and Taiwan will eventually reunify peacefully.

“We will try to reassure the authorities in Beijing that there is nothing in the president’s transit that they should find disturbing or in any way modifying or changing or casting any doubt on the policy that exists between us and the People’s Republic of China,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said last week.

But Chen’s “transit” status this week and next--granted to provide for the “safety, comfort and convenience” of the applicant--is merely a well-orchestrated charade masking the warmest welcome the Bush administration can offer without openly inviting trouble, analysts say.

“A visiting Taiwan official has never had the trappings of state before, but this visit is one step toward the trappings of a state visit,” said Nicholas Lardy, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution.

“It’s clear that Bush has moved away from the 2-decades-old policy of ambiguity in relations, not only on strategic issues,” he added.

In New York from today until Wednesday, Chen will reportedly meet with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) as well as with Helms’ fellow conservative Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and other congressional figures--attracting more attention than many heads of state who have made formal visits to Washington since the Bush administration took office.

Neither the United States nor Taiwan is discussing Chen’s two U.S. visits, which will bracket a 10-day trip to El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay and Honduras. But Chen is also scheduled to be greeted by New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Houston Mayor Lee P. Brown, U.S. and Taiwanese sources say.

“The Bush administration is welcoming members of Congress who want to meet President Chen and give him the respect due to a democratically elected leader of a U.S. ally. This is in stark contrast to the Clinton administration, which treated the Taiwanese like second-class citizens,” DeLay said.

The Clinton administration actively discouraged lawmakers from meeting with Chen when he passed through Los Angeles last year. Now, however, private meetings between members of Congress and foreign leaders “advance our interests,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said last Monday when asked about Chen’s visit.

Although Taiwan has been promised greater attention as part of Republican political campaigns in the past, this time an administration is following through, experts say. And the island’s leaders and envoys are clearly pleased.

“Under this administration, our relationship is steadily getting better. This administration is treating our president with more respect and dignity. It treats us as friends, and it’s easier to communicate with our counterparts. It is also more positive in our efforts to join international organizations,” said Chien Jen Chen, the senior envoy at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Taiwan’s de facto diplomatic mission in Washington.

Indeed, on Wednesday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson--who visited Taipei, the Taiwanese capital, several times when he was governor of Wisconsin--told the World Health Organization in Geneva that the United States supports a role for Taiwan in WHO, including attending meetings and using the island’s expertise to advance health issues.

President Chen, meanwhile, is angling for U.S. support to attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shanghai in October and to hold talks with Chinese President Jiang Zemin on political and economic issues, including ending a decades-old break in direct trade and transport links between China and Taiwan.

Despite that ban, China is now Taiwan’s largest trading partner, and the island is China’s fourth-largest, after Japan, the United States and the European Union, according to Min Xin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. These economic ties are strengthening informal integration.

But even before Chen arrives, U.S. analysts have begun warning about the consequences of further solidifying bonds with Taiwan.

“For China, this is not only loss of face, it’s a slap in the face,” Pei said. “The Chinese won’t be able to do anything about it now. But they’re going to hunker down and take the longer view: He who laughs last, lasts best.”

U.S. analysts warn about the risks of an incremental policy that would either open the way for or implicitly wink at a declaration of independence by Taiwan, an idea that has growing backing in Congress.

“It would be a horrendous mistake for Bush to go in the direction of scrapping the one-China policy and recognizing Taiwan,” Suettinger said.

“U.S.-China relations are already heading in a backward direction, a retrogression symbolized most by Taiwan. The danger is that the steady pace of small steps is cumulatively leading China to conclude that the United States is making much more fundamental changes in policy,” he added.

Ironically, Taipei appears to be more concerned than Washington about the dangers of closer ties. Although most Taiwanese politicians welcome higher-level contact, they express wariness about becoming a pawn in a power struggle between Beijing and Washington.

Any upgrade in relations should be based on Taiwan’s role “as a beacon of democracy in the region, not an outpost of American military force,” said Yu-ming Shaw, former deputy secretary-general of the Nationalist Party’s Central Committee and now publisher of the Central Daily News. “The United States and the PRC [People’s Republic] have every reason to compete. But we can’t afford to be in the middle of that kind of competition. We’re too small.”

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Wright reported from Washington and Marshall from Taipei and Hong Kong.