Fallout from Taiwan elections risks creating further mistrust in US-China relations, analyst warns

If Beijing steps up the pressure on Taiwan following a DPP win, it may heighten calls for a tougher US response, a mainland academic warns
The election was highlighted as one of the main potential triggers of an ‘action-reaction’ cycle that heightened the risk of misjudgments and misunderstandings

Taiwan election 2024

Alyssa Chen

Published: 6:00am, 5 Jan 2024

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Beijing’s likely response to a victory for the independence-leaning William Lai Ching-te in Taiwan’s presidential election may trigger a chain of events that risks further undermining trust between China and the United States, a mainland academic has warned.

Shao Yuqun, director of the Institute for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said the presidential and legislative elections this month may be one of the five biggest challenges the two countries face in stabilising relations.

In an opinion piece published on Wednesday on the China-US Focus website, run by the Hong Kong-based non-profit China-United States Exchange Foundation, Shao said Beijing may choose to react strongly in the event of a victory for Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party in the hope of deterring what it sees as pro-independence forces.

Lai had been leading the two other candidates in opinion polls published before a ban on publishing their findings came into force on Wednesday.

However, Washington may view such a response from that mainland as Beijing “coercing Taiwan’s democratically elected leaders”, prompting demands for the White House to take a tougher line and increased support in Congress for Taiwan.

“China and the United States are thus caught in an ‘action-reaction’ cycle … with the possibility of both sides misinterpreting and misjudging each other’s policy signals,” she said.

Meanwhile, other factors – including an upsurge in tensions between China and the Philippines over their long-running dispute in the South China Sea – are also weighing on relations between the two superpowers.

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Both China and the Philippines have accused each other of provocation, with Manila moving to strengthen its military ties with Washington and stepping up the number of joint exercises.

Manila has also accused Beijing of coercive behaviour after a series of clashes, including the use of water cannons against Philippine ships supplying troops stationed on a disputed reef.

But Beijing has accused Washington of encouraging Manila in the dispute, and urged the Philippines to “act with caution” and not “collude with external forces”.

Citing the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Gaza war, Shao said the US would try to portray China as a “challenger or disrupter of the global and regional order”.

“This will imperil strategic mutual trust, which is already in deficit,” she warned.

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Shao also argued the US presidential election in November would put the relationship under strain.

Citing the recent court decision to ban Donald Trump from the ballot in Colorado because of his role in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election result, she said the “chaos of the election” would undermine confidence in the US system and increase the American strategic community’s anxiety about the “institutional challenge” from China.

When Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met in San Francisco late last year they made progress in some areas, such as agreeing to work to tackle the US fentanyl crisis and resume military communications, which China had frozen in protest at then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China that must be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. Like most countries, Washington does not officially recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but is opposed to any change in the cross-strait status quo by force and is legally bound to help the island defend itself.

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In late December, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles “CQ” Brown, spoke with his Chinese counterpart General Liu Zhenli via video link in the first talks of their kind in more than a year.

“If visible results can be achieved in the fentanyl crisis, this could lead to a [positive] change in US public opinion towards China to a certain extent, which is particularly important for Sino-US relations as we enter the US election year,” Shao wrote.