Taiwan and US set for sensitive dialogue – and reveal the timing in advance

Name: Why has the relationship between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan taken a turn for the worse?
Uploaded: 2021-01-06T10:37:01.000Z
Duration: 10 min 22 s
Description: Why has the relationship between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan taken a turn for the worse?

US State Department takes rare step of revealing schedule of closed-door talks before they take place

Clarke Cooper, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, will represent Washington in online dialogue, on Wednesday US time

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The online talks are due to take place early on Thursday in Taiwan, or Wednesday evening in Washington. Photo: Reuters

Lawrence Chung

Published: 6:37pm, 6 Jan 2021Updated: 9:51pm, 6 Jan 2021

Taiwan and the United States will hold talks on political and military cooperation in a move certain to draw protest from Beijing two weeks before the change of government in Washington.

In a rare move, the US State Department made public the schedule of the closed-door talks, to be held online at 6.30pm on Wednesday in Washington (7.30am Thursday in Taipei) with Clarke Cooper, the US assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, among those taking part.

The sensitive round of dialogue comes two months after the first US-Taiwan Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue was held in Washington – the result of a brief trip to Taiwan by US undersecretary of state Keith Krach, who was the highest-ranking State Department official to visit the island in more than four decades.

Taiwan has been tight-lipped over who will represent the democratic island in talks with Cooper. Political and military dialogue is considered sensitive because of opposition from Beijing, which has time and again protested against official contact between Washington and Taipei.

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Why has the relationship between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan taken a turn for the worse?

Beijing considers self-ruled Taiwan part of its territory that must be reunited with mainland China by force if necessary. It protested against Krach’s Taiwan visit, insisting that it violated the one-China policy that the US committed to observing after it switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei in 1979.

“Taiwan and the US have maintained various levels of communication channels on a pluralistic agenda, and on issues of mutual concern,” Joanne Ou, a spokeswoman of Taiwan’s foreign ministry, said on Wednesday. “They have often kept those channels open and smooth in order to deepen their cooperation in political, economic, security and other areas.”