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Strategic Vision vol. 8, no. 43 (November, 2019)
Clashing Visions
Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and America’s Quad Meet in Taipei Patrick Mendis & Joey Wang
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ith the United States Congress now overwhelmingly supporting the White House’s new National Security Strategy, it appears as though the executive branch may have sidelined the US’s longstanding Taiwan policy of strategic ambiguity. This is even more evident now, as the government of Taiwan—like that of the United States—openly encourages the rights of Hong Kong protesters to preserve their democracy in accordance with the stipulations of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. It is against this backdrop that the administration of President Donald Trump recently conceded to selling
Taiwan US$8 billion worth of F-16 fighter jets. Last year, the US government also permitted Taiwan to import American submarine technologies to help develop the island’s own submarine industry, initially building a US$3.3 billion indigenous submarine in the southern port city of Kaohsiung. For China’s Chairman Xi Jinping, unifying Taiwan would be an important achievement. However, Beijing’s broader strategy of supplanting American and Western influence in the region cannot be achieved without China’s supporting objectives embedded in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Beijing’s con-
photo: ROC Presidential Office President Tsai meets with members of a delegation from the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.
Patrick Mendis is an a visiting professor of global affairs at National Chengchi University. Joey Wang is a defense analyst in the United States.