Money, Democracy, China: Understand the US-Taiwan Alliance

This episode explores the complex geopolitical relationship between the US, Taiwan, and China, focusing on recent tensions and the implications for global politics.

1. The US is committed to defending Taiwan's democracy against potential Chinese aggression.
2. Taiwan holds strategic military and economic importance in the Indo-Pacific region.
3. Recent Chinese military activities around Taiwan are raising global concerns.
4. The rhetoric from both US and Chinese officials has escalated, reflecting heightened tensions.
5. The situation is closely intertwined with broader US-China relations and has implications for global stability.

1. Introduction

Hosts introduce the topic and set the stage for the discussion on US-Taiwan relations and the implications of Chinese aggression. Susan Davis: "Today we're talking about the US relationship with Taiwan."

2. Strategic Importance of Taiwan

Emily Fang explains Taiwan's role in the global geopolitical landscape and its significance in the US's strategy. Emily Fang: "Taiwan is part of what the US calls its first island chain strategy."

3. Rising Tensions

Discussion on recent actions by China that have escalated tensions, including military exercises and harsh rhetoric. Tom Bowman: "President Xi Jinping has said he wants to take back Taiwan militarily if necessary."

4. US and China Rhetoric

Analyzing the impact of political statements from the US and Chinese leaders on the ongoing tensions. Tom Bowman: "Anyone attempting to separate Taiwan from China is bound to be smashed to pieces."

5. Implications and Outlook

Looking ahead to the potential geopolitical shifts and the role of upcoming US elections in shaping policy towards Taiwan. Emily Fang: "US politics could only magnify that discord even more in Taiwan."

1. Stay Informed: Follow reliable news sources to understand the evolving situation.
2. Engage in Dialogue: Discuss these issues in community and educational settings to raise awareness.
3. Support Policy: Advocate for policies that promote stability and peace in the region.
4. Cultural Exchange: Participate in programs that foster understanding between people from the US, Taiwan, and China.
5. Personal Preparedness: Stay informed about how global politics might affect personal investments and security.

In the landmark bipartisan foreign aid package that passed earlier this year, there was money for two allies in ongoing military conflicts: Israel and Ukraine. But there was also money for the Indo-Pacific region. So why is the U.S. interested in the region and how is Taiwan involved?

This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, defense correspondent Tom Bowman, and foreign correspondent Emily Feng.

The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.

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Susan Davis, Tom Bowman, Emily Fang

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Rustin
Hi, this is Rustin at the Medical University of South Carolina preparing for surgery to donate my kidney.

Susan Davis
Oh, wow. This podcast was recorded at 10:37 a.m. on Wednesday, June 5.

Rustin
Things might have changed by the time you hear this, but I will have one less kidney. And the stranger down the hall will be the new owner of that kidney, hopefully extending his or her life by many years.

Okay, here's the show.

Susan Davis
Wow. What a nice and heroic thing to do for a stranger.

Tom Bowman
Amazing.

Emily Fang
That's incredible.

Susan Davis
Hey there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

Tom Bowman
I'm Tom Bowman. I cover the Pentagon.

Susan Davis
And Emily Fang, NPR's correspondent in Taiwan, joins us now. Hello, Emily.

Emily Fang
Hey, thanks for having me.

Susan Davis
So today on the podcast, we're talking about the us relationship with Taiwan. President Biden has committed to defending Taiwan and its democracy in the event of a military attack by China, which, of course, views Taiwan as part of its country. A recent foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel also included billions of dollars for the Indo Pacific region, but specifically to bolster defense capabilities around Taiwan. Emily, can you take a step back and explain for our listeners, who are not experts on this issue or the region, what exactly is the US interest here in protecting Taiwan?

Emily Fang
Well, number one, it's curbing China's influence. And this dates back to the early days of the cold war, when that's explicitly what Taiwan was for. Since then, Taiwan has evolved into this vibrant democracy. So it's become also a moral and ideological point to protect the democracy that exists in Taiwan against China remain this massively strategic location and what the US calls its first island chain strategy. So Taiwan is part of the Philippines and Japan and this ring of essentially military bases that were once used to contain the Soviet Union in China and now are an important bulwark to the network of us military alliances around the world. But the interest is now commercial as well. There's just a huge amount of global shipping and oil and gas and things like semiconductors that are made or passed through the waters around Taiwan. So it's become more important than ever.

Susan Davis
Tom, do you see something specific about this moment that seems to be heightening these tensions which Emily just articulated have long existed? Is this just part of the broader escalation of tensions we've seen between the US and China. Is there something else going on here?

Tom Bowman
Well, I think a couple of things. President Xi Jinping has basically said he wants to take back Taiwan. He will do it militarily if necessary. And also going back over the past couple of decades, China has put a huge amount of money into building up its military. It's not on par with the US, but it is in some ways reaching almost, you know, a status of, you know, on par in some areas, particularly in space. They're building anti satellite weapons in space, cyber. They're putting a lot money into that. They're building a lot more fifth generation fighters, as they say, and aircraft carriers. And the big thing is coercive measures around the region, particularly with Taiwan. When the president, the recent president in Taiwan was inaugurated, gave his speech, China then sent ships all around Taiwan almost like a blockade. They did similar move when Nancy Pelosi went there. So there is a concern with Xi Jinping that he wants to maybe move more aggressively against Taiwan. And us military officials say they think they would have the capability of taking Taiwan militarily by 2027.

Susan Davis
Wow.

And, Emily, as Tom just said, Taiwan just recently had elections. Has the new president changed positions at all?

Emily Fang
So, yes, Taiwan has a new president. He has sworn to uphold the policies of the previous president. But he also gave this inauguration speech a couple of weeks ago that depending on what your politics are and who you swear allegiance to, people have read in very different ways in Taiwan. His political party president lies, political party has said that nothing, the status quo between China and Taiwan has not changed. China has said that his speech used certain phrases and terminology that seemed to signify Taiwan saw itself as an independent country without formally declaring independence. And within days of Taiwan's new president being inaugurated, Taiwan's military said it was going to launch more military drills encircling the entire island that were even bigger in some ways than previous drills. And they said these drills were explicitly in reaction to lie speech to punish Taiwan for being too pro independence.

Obviously, people in Taiwan don't feel that lie broke any kind of status quo. But the fact of the matter is that China is really upset. And at a big defense summit just a few days ago in Singapore, China's defense chief came up and said, listen, if Taiwan's leaders continue to put out what China sees as very pro independence rhetoric, they're going to hit back even harder.

Susan Davis
I mean, Tom, this is so interesting because in diplomatic situations like this, words and rhetoric matter so much and everything is parsed. And yet you also saw Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in the region recently also using really tough language.

Tom Bowman
Right. He said, listen, no country in the area should be coerced.

He talked about the military drills that were held around Taiwan. He called it so called punishment.

But his chinese counterpart also said, listen, anybody attempting to separate Taiwan from China is bound to be smashed to pieces. So the rhetoric has really increased there.

Emily Fang
So, you know, I was in Singapore. I was at this defense conference that the us defense chief and the chinese defense chief were at. And I go every year because it's the one chance where you can actually talk for an extended period of time with chinese military officials. Normally they're very guarded and inaccessible in China.

But I asked them, what do you think of your defense chief speech? And their interpretation is this is a message for peace. Basically, China kept trying to signal in that speech, we don't want to fight. And we know that the US and Taiwan don't want to fight. So please tone down the rhetoric. Someone reign in Taiwan's president because we really don't want to have to have to fight, but we're prepared to do so if Taiwan in their eyes, continues to misbehave. Unfortunately, they just said it in such an aggressive way and offered no room for compromise that I think it just turned up the temperature more. Unfortunately, yeah.

Susan Davis
All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about this when we get back.

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Susan Davis
And we're back. And Emily, China has been such a focus of politics here in the US for both President Biden and former President Trump. But I'm curious for the perspective on our election from your vantage point and from the people you talk to. How closely are people following the US presidential election here?

Emily Fang
Pretty closely in Taiwan, because the US is a really, really important security guarantor of Taiwan. President Trump in his term as president, was not a very stable, shall we say, partner for Taiwan. Now that he is not president, he's also made comments that he thinks the US is too reliant on Taiwan's semiconductor and technology industry. And that's something he would try to take down a peg if he were president again. So people in Taiwan don't know if he's going to be hard on China, which would make some people in Taiwan happy, or whether he's going to be both hitting back at Taiwan at the same time that he's trying to curb China's influence. All of it is amplifying already existing political uncertainty in Taiwan's domestic political scene, where in just the first few weeks of the new presidency, there's been mass protests and fights in the legislature. So us politics could only magnify that discord even more.

Susan Davis
Tom, I do think that there is some confusion over what maybe a President Trump would do with Taiwan. President Biden has been more clear. But I do think it's worth reminding people that when you look to the other parts of the government, like on Capitol Hill, there is vast bipartisan support for the US to stand with Taiwan. This isn't as controversial an issue down the ballot as I might say, as it might be with the people leading the party.

Tom Bowman
No, I think that's right. I think both parties have strong support for Taiwan. The only thing about Trump, I would say, with, militarily speaking, is providing billions more dollars for Taiwan. I could see him, like he said in Ukraine, let's make it a loan. Let's not just give them money. So that's a possibility. But again, I think with both parties supporting Taiwan, I think regardless of who wins in November, there's still a lot of support for Taiwan and also a lot more money heading that way for defensive capabilities.

Susan Davis
Tom, can I ask you a question, especially because Taiwan was part of this broader funding package about the geopolitics of the moment and I wonder if you see any connective tissue between Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a potential chinese invasion of Taiwan. In that, at the very least, it's providing sort of a playbook of how the US would respond to an adversary invading an ally.

Tom Bowman
Well, I think there were a couple of things. I think the US looks at Ukraine. We need to support Ukraine, the US would say, because if we don't, that's going to send the message to China that the US won't stand by its allies or friends. That's a big, big part of the package as well. And I think looking at the future with a possible war with China, I think the US is looking at, again, some sort of, they call it a porcupine defense to not make it easy for China to take over Taiwan. Layered defense. And that's what they're pushing with the Taiwanese. But the big thing, I think strategically is if we don't support Ukraine, that's going to send the message to China that the US doesn't stand by its friends.

Susan Davis
Emily, what are you watching for from here? Is it just sort of an outcome of the election here, or is there things on the ground there that you're covering more closely to see the next sort of turn in this?

Emily Fang
I think three things. I mean, I wonder how the US might work with Taiwan's new leadership that, although it says wants to continue the policies of its predecessors, has taken already a much more strident tone, and whether the US is going to have challenges balancing that, basically with tensions with China. Two, speaking about arming Taiwan, there are still massive delays in getting weapons that the US has already sold or given to Taiwan. Sometimes the lead time is as long as two years. And so the US really needs to work on that. And third, I'm looking at the South China Sea, which Taiwan is a part of, but it involves countries like the Philippines, which have been very, very outstanding. And I'm actually much more worried about hot conflict in the short term between the Philippines and China than between China and Taiwan.

Tom Bowman
No, that's a really good point because as we've seen recently, China will use water cannons against philippine boats in the area. And also the US has offered to do patrols in the Philippines. And the Philippines at this point have said, no, we're not interested. We don't want to rattle the cage too much when it comes to China. But that could be something you see down the road where the US will actually, us ships will accompany philippine ships. That's quite possible. I do know from talking with senior military officials that for a long time. What the Philippines were worried about was islamist insurgents in the southern part of the Philippines. That's no longer a concern for them. They're much more worried about China, and they're providing some training areas in the northern part of the Philippines for the US. That's fairly recent and that's significant.

Susan Davis
All right. Emily Fang in Taiwan, thank you so much for coming on today and explaining all this to us.

Emily Fang
My pleasure.

Susan Davis
That is it for us today. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

Tom Bowman
I'm Tom Bowman. I cover the Pentagon.

Susan Davis
And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.

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