What does Taiwan hope for following Tsai-Trump phone call?
Taipei acknowledges contact signals no major policy shift but believes it may now have more room to manoeuvre
Taiwan is hopeful of securing a solid communication channel with the incoming administration of US president-elect Donald Trump following a telephone conversation between the island’s leader Tsai Ing-wen and Trump on December 2.
While acknowledging the call did not signal any major policy shift by the United States in terms of Sino-US-Taiwan relations, Taiwanese officials said the call could give Taipei more room to manoeuvre in improving substantive ties with Washington.
But analysts said the call had already had a negative impact on strained relations between Taipei and Beijing, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province and has warned the US and other countries against official contact with the island.
Beijing has criticised Tsai for failing to fully back the 1992 consensus, a tacit understanding reached between Taipei and Beijing that year that there was only “one China” but each side has its own interpretation of what that stands for. The apparently consistent stance between Tsai and Beijing so far is the South China Sea issue, with Tsai pleading to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty when she made her inauguration speech on May 20.
The telephone call between Tsai and Trump on December 2 also raised eyebrows in the US where critics said the president-elect, although still a private citizen until his inauguration as US president on January 20, had broken nearly four decades of diplomatic convention and risked upsetting Sino-US relations.