Trump's phone call with Taiwan destroyed 37 years of US-China relations - Economist

Donald Trump’s phone call with Taiwan’s president spreads alarm

AT SOME point, almost all American administrations hit a crisis with China, usually early on. A mid-air collision involving an American spy plane in 2001 sent George W. Bush’s then-new White House into full crisis-management mode. Donald Trump faces his first China crisis before even taking office.
The trigger for the flap was a phone call on December 2nd between Mr Trump and Tsai Ing-wen, the elected president of Taiwan. She offered her congratulations, said Mr Trump, and the two talked about strengthening Taiwan’s defence and economy. It sounds routine.  But it overturned four decades of diplomatic practice. Neither American presidents nor presidents-elect have spoken officially to the leaders of Taiwan since 1979, when the United States broke off diplomatic ties with the island and switched to the People’s Republic. China holds Taiwan to be a renegade province and regards communications with Taiwanese leaders as interference in its internal affairs. As leaders who have talked with the Dalai Lama have discovered, foreign meetings with someone of whom China disapproves can infuriate the Chinese government.
Most American foreign-policy experts were also appalled at what looked like careless trampling over decades of finely tuned diplomacy (see article). In response, Mr Trump took to Twitter to declare that “The president of Taiwan CALLED ME today,” as if that made any difference (in this context, even using the word president offends China). It is almost impossible to imagine Ms Tsai telephoning America’s president-elect on her own initiative. Her spokesman, Alex Huang, said the call had been pre-arranged, though he would not say by whom.
By far the most likely candidate is one of Mr Trump’s team of advisers. Taiwan’s semi-official Central News Agency, quoting unnamed sources, said the contact man was Edwin Feulner, a former president of the Heritage Foundation, a think-tank in Washington. Others named Stephen Yates, a deputy national-security adviser under the Bush administration, and still others, John Bolton, Mr Bush’s ambassador to the UN, who has said America ought one day to restore full diplomatic recognition to Taiwan. All three are conservative anti-communists who want to tilt American policy further away from the government in Beijing. Mr Trump’s phone call seems to suggest their influence is strong at the moment.
The reaction in Taiwan was celebratory. “People from different political camps all agree that this has brought Taiwan back to the table,” said Hsu Yung-ming, a lawmaker with the New Power Party, which is aligned with Ms Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party. The opposition Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, offered grudging support. Many ordinary Taiwanese say the call gave Taiwan some of the international recognition it craved and deserved.
China reacted cautiously. Wang Yi, the foreign minister, lodged a formal diplomatic protest, said nothing would change the world’s recognition of China, and then turned to the congenial task of blaming Taiwan for everything (he described the call as a “petty trick”). His caution is understandable. Chinese leaders are used to hearing their country bashed on America’s campaign trail and have learned to be wary of political rhetoric. Mr Trump is only president-in-waiting, so the call could be construed as unofficial.
China reacted cautiously. Wang Yi, the foreign minister, lodged a formal diplomatic protest, said nothing would change the world’s recognition of China, and then turned to the congenial task of blaming Taiwan for everything (he described the call as a “petty trick”). His caution is understandable. Chinese leaders are used to hearing their country bashed on America’s campaign trail and have learned to be wary of political rhetoric. Mr Trump is only president-in-waiting, so the call could be construed as unofficial.
Anyway, it is not clear whether a policy shift is in the making, or how much of one. Mr Trump spent much of the campaign trampling on the norms of domestic political debate. It is possible he has decided to do the same thing with diplomatic niceties, too. In the words of Bonnie Glaser of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, another think-tank in Washington, “President-elect Trump is just shooting from the hip, trying to take phone calls of congratulatory messages from leaders around the world without consideration for the implications.”
Some newspapers in Taiwan and America offered a different explanation, suggesting Mr Trump’s family business was behind it all. The Trump empire has shown interest in buying a hotel development near Taipei’s international airport. Although the appearance of a conflict exists, it is a doubtful explanation. Taiwanese tourism is in precipitous decline. Its government is falling over backwards to attract foreign investors. And the development in question, the Taoyuan Aerotropolis Project, has been canvassing hotel chains all over the world for years. Mr Trump would not need to offer the Taiwanese government anything in return for buying hotel space.
But if one of his advisers really were responsible for setting up the phone call, then that would suggest that the call was neither brash nor corrupt, but substantive. How much so is another matter. It could be anything from a small upgrade in ties with Taiwan within the framework of existing American policy to a more thorough-going rethink. Either way, China has cause for circumspection. As Shi Yinhong of Renmin University in Beijing puts it, concern about Mr Trump is growing.