US and Taiwan: Time for Taiwan to come in “From the Cold”
Noriko Watanabe and Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
The robust female President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan received a boost by receiving a phone call from the US President-elect Donald Trump. It is easy to overplay such a minor event but given the history of appeasing China, then this minor event is much larger in capacity. However, rather than rebuking Trump or overplaying the “China card,” it is worth stating that Taiwan is a progressive democratic nation with a powerful economic infrastructure.
In other words, it is high time to bring Taiwan in “from the cold.” After all, unlike the one-party state control of the Communist Party in China, the political reality of North Korea, and the current instability blighting South Korea, the nation of Taiwan is moving along in all the right directions.
It isn’t a case of being anti-China; on the contrary, it is in the interest of all nations to accept the independent reality of modern Taiwan and foster closer ties in northeast-Asia with stable powers. After all, economic trade between America, China, Japan, and Taiwan, is a natural reality.
Of course, China is rightly concerned about any negative containment policies applying to Obama’s foreign policy legacy. Yet, China and Taiwan have no reason to be enemies and both mature nations should focus on moving along together. Indeed, external negative forces are not warranted throughout the region and the same applies to any one nation focusing on negative un-brinkmanship.
In a recent article by Modern Tokyo Times it was stated, “In the realm of trade, Tsai seeks to diversify Taiwan’s trading partners in order to increase the independence of this nation. Tsai, of course, supports economic trade with China but from strength rather than obligations. In other words, she opposes many aspects of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) between China and Taiwan. Therefore, Tsai is focused on utilizing the full strength of Taiwan’s economic power based on open trade and furthering closer ties with other nations – while maintaining strong economic ties with China.”
Turning back to the phone conversation between the President-elect of America and the leader of Taiwan. Then Trump rightly pointed out afterward that negative comments about his conversation are a little hypocritical. Trump rightly says, “Interesting how the US sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.”
In truth, democratic nations should be questioning trade and political policies without any strings attached to undemocratic nations like Saudi Arabia. Yet, when it comes to democratic Taiwan, then a more honest approach is needed because this modern state is a great model to be respected.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-38194371
Modern Tokyo News is part of the Modern Tokyo Times group
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