China, US have ‘responsibility’ for direct talks to avoid conflict, says former Obama adviser

It is in the interests of both nations to avoid war, says co-author of a new book on US-Taiwan relations

Ryan Hass says there are multiple possible scenarios and armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait is not inevitable

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It is in the interests of both China and the US to avoid war, says Ryan Hass, co-author of a new book on US-Taiwan relations. Photo: AP

Published: 9:00am, 28 Apr 2023Updated: 1:10pm, 29 Apr 2023

China and the United States should engage in direct dialogue rather than military signalling over Taiwan since it is both of their interests to avoid war, according to Ryan Hass, a former US presidential adviser for Barack Obama, and co-author of a new book on US-Taiwan relations.

Despite warnings from US and Taiwanese officials that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could attack Taiwan in the coming decade, the book US-Taiwan Relations: Will China’s Challenge Lead to a Crisis? stresses that armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait is not inevitable.

However, relations could go down a “dangerous path” if issues around the island become a guessing game, said Hass, a China analyst at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

Hass co-authored the book with Richard Bush, senior fellow at Brookings, and Bonnie Glaser, head of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific programme.

China views the self-ruled island as a breakaway province that must be reunified with the mainland, but most countries, including the US, do not consider Taiwan as an independent state.

Under the Taiwan Relations Act, the US reserves the right to maintain the capacity to resist coercion that would “jeopardise the security, social or economic system of the people of Taiwan”.

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