A congratulatory phone call to the president-elect of the United States would have been regarded as normal: a routine courtesy call that leaders the world over make when someone assumes a high political office. But a Donald Trump phone conversation last week with Tsai Ing-wen and his description of her as the ‘President of Taiwan’ seem to have stirred the proverbial hornet’s nest. China, which baulks at any diplomatic contact between America and the island, lodged a formal complaint with the US. The diplomatic ripples are being felt all over the Asia-Pacific.
The episode has now forced leaders in the region to pause and carefully mull over the import of the telephonic talk between the two to decide whether it should be dismissed as an expression of a new leader’s inexperience or as a serious move indicating a shift in the US’ ‘One China’ policy that had been put in place since 1979.
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Not only Sino-American relations, the issue is also important for the stability of the Asia-Pacific, because other nations, emboldened by a perceived policy shift in Washington, might start recalibrating their individual policies towards China on the Taiwan issue.
Trump assumes office on January 20 next year, and so his remarks don’t have the imprimatur of official American policy. But they do give an indication of what it may be in the future.
The nub of the problem lies in Trump and his team’s description of Tsai Ing-wen as ‘President of Taiwan’—a title the American leadership has carefully avoided for decades while referring to a Taiwanese leader. The fact that in both Trump’s tweet and in the statement issued by his team she was identified as ‘president’ makes it difficult to be dismissed as an innocent mistake.
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For the time being, it looks as if China has decided to play it down—Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi dismissed it as a “petty act” by Taiwan for initiating the phone call. Though the Chinese foreign ministry made it clear that it had put up a “stern representation” with the “relevant” people in the US administration, indications from Beijing suggest that it would rather wait and see how the new president behaves towards China before jumping to any conclusion.
Since 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan after he lost the civil war to Mao Tse Dong and set up the Republic of China (ROC) there, the island has been governed independently of the mainland, where the Chinese Communist Party set up the People’s Republic of China (PRC), with its capital in Beijing. Both sides, though, believed in a ‘One China’ policy, though they differed on which of the two controlled the political levers to run the country.
Tsai’s Democratic People’s Party, that won the presidential election in Taiwan this year, however, believes in Taiwan’s independence. Though Tsai has been careful so far not to push any policy that will break the existing status quo and lead to the formal separation of the island from the mainland, China-Taiwan relations have been strained since she assumed power.
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Sushma Swaraj with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi
The US, who had been the biggest backer of Chiang and the ROC in the past, cut off diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1979 in the wake of Washington’s rapprochement with Communist China. But this has not stopped the Americans from remaining the chief security provider to Taiwan against any possible military aggression from mainland China—it ended up selling it over $46 billion worth of defence equipments since 1990.
However, if describing Tsai as the ‘president of Taiwan’ foreshadows US policy on the matter, it would indicate that it now supports Taiwan’s independence and no longer sees it as part of the PRC.
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Most nations in the world, barring 22, maintain diplomatic relations with PRC and believe in a ‘One China’ policy. Though they don’t have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, most also maintain a trade and cultural office in Taipei to have unofficial ties with leaders in the island.
India also follows this pattern. “Since we came in late to Taipei, we too followed the convention set by others by restricting our engagement to trade and cultural issues,” says former Indian ambassador Vinod Khanna, who set up the Indian trade and cultural centre in Taiwan in 1995.
Though India continues to maintain a ‘One China’ policy, over the past few years it has had some serious rethink over this position. In one of her first meetings with foreign minister Wang in June 2014, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj raised the issue about Chinese indifference to Indian sensitivities in PoK and Arunachal Pradesh, asking her Chinese visitor that since India maintains a ‘One China’ policy, why can’t Beijing reciprocate the gesture with a ‘One India’ policy.
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Since the Modi government came to power, India has also stopped its reiteration of a ‘One China’ policy in joint statements with the Chinese.
Relations between Taiwan and India, on the other hand, has shown a gradual but steady rise as the two sides have been finding newer ways to expand their cooperation in trade, economic and cultural fronts by encouraging investments in each other’s countries and enhancing more people-to-people contact.
Tsai’s Taiwanese government launched a ‘New Southbound Policy’ in August this year that will allow the island to share its “resources, talent and market opportunities” with 18 countries in Southeast and South Asia nations as well as New Zealand and Australia. India, according to this plan, is at the centre.
“India is a large country with a well-educated middle class and a deep human resource pool,” John Cheng Chun Deng, Taiwanese minister without portfolio, told a group of visiting Indian journalists in Taipei in September this year. “Moreover,” he added, “India has strong influence at the international level and Taiwan’s situation is unique, where it needs friends.”
All this may well translate into enhanced commercial and cultural ties between Taiwan and India. But the rhetoric notwithstanding, both sides are also aware of the important role that the People’s Republic of China plays in their relations.
“The management of India-China relations has become more complex and more challenging than at any time in the history of independent India,” former Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran told participants at a seminar in New Delhi last month. “There needs to be a fine distinction between treating China as an adversary, which it obviously is and will remain so for the foreseeable future, and casting it in the role of an enemy,” he added.
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Therefore, Saran advocates a “nuanced mix of engagement and resistance, and this mix will change as India’s own co-relation with China changes and the regional and global environment continues to evolve”. He added, “This would suggest a policy of prudence, not provocation: caution and avoidance of bravado”.
This could well be an assessment shared by many South Block policy-makers. In the coming days, stronger and deeper ties with Taiwan might not force India to break with its ‘One China’ policy. But it could pave the way that forces China to see beyond its existing mindset of treating India not only as a South Asian power but also a key player in Asia, one whose destiny is intertwined with its own, especially in the cherished goals of stability, growth and development.