Diplomatic experts predict fraught start to US relations with Beijing after president-elect’s conversation with Tsai Ing-wen

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Donald Trump looked to have sparked a potentially damaging diplomatic row with China on Friday after speaking to Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen on the telephone in a move experts said would anger Beijing.



The call, first reported by the Taipei Times and confirmed by the Financial Times, is thought to be the first between the leader of the island and a US president or president-elect since ties between America and Taiwan were severed in 1979, at Beijing’s behest.

Gaffe or provocation, Donald Trump's Taiwan phone call affects global stability Read more

The US closed its embassy in Taiwan – a democratically ruled island which Beijing considers a breakaway province – in the late 1970s following the historic rapprochement between Beijing and Washington that stemmed from Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip to China.

Since then the US has adhered to the so-called “one China” principle which officially considers the independently governed island part of the same single Chinese nation as the mainland.

Trump’s transition team said Tsai, who was elected Tawain’s first female president in January, had congratulated the billionaire tycoon on his recent victory.

“During the discussion they noted the close economic, political, and security ties that exist between Taiwan and the United States,” a statement said. “President-elect Trump also congratulated President Tsai on becoming president of Taiwan earlier this year.”



Beijing sought to play down the importance of the phone call, with foreign minister Wang Yi dismissing it as “just a small trick” by Taiwan.

'Terrific guy, fantastic country': Trump heaps praise on Pakistan's leader Read more

In an interview with Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV Wang said he hoped Trump’s conversation would not damage or interfere with the US’ longstanding adherence to the “One China” policy.

“China doesn’t want to see any disturbance [to US-China relations],” Wang added, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper.



An editorial in the Global Times, a state-run tabloid, echoed the foreign minister’s words, calling the phone call a “petty gesture” from Taiwan to which Trump had mistakenly responded.

The newspaper warned that by siding with Taiwan, Trump would “destroy Sino-US ties”. “That means the current pattern between Beijing and Washington as well as international order will be overturned. We believe this is not what Trump wants.”

Experts said the unanticipated call would infuriate China’s leaders.



“This is going to make real waves in Beijing,” said Bill Bishop, a veteran China watcher who runs the Sinocism newsletter from Washington DC. “I think we will see quite the reaction from Beijing … this will put relations from day one into a very difficult place.”

Evan Medeiros, the Asia director at the White House national security council, told the Financial Times: “The Chinese leadership will see this as a highly provocative action, of historic proportions.

“Regardless if it was deliberate or accidental, this phone call will fundamentally change China’s perceptions of Trump’s strategic intentions for the negative. With this kind of move, Trump is setting a foundation of enduring mistrust and strategic competition for US-China relations.”

In an indication that Trump’s team had grasped the potential damage caused to relations with Beijing, the US president-elect later tweeted:

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency. Thank you!

However, even that 17-word tweet threatened to further inflame the situation. The traditional US diplomatic formulation for referring to Taiwan’s leader - one specifically designed not to upset Beijing - is “the president on Taiwan” rather than “the president of Taiwan”.



In a second tweet addressing criticism of the call Trump wrote:



Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.

Bishop said it was hard to know whether the call was the result of a deliberate policy move by Trump or merely an intervention by a member of his staff who was friendly towards Tsai Ing-wen and Taipei.

Trump adviser Peter Navarro, an economics professor, travelled to Taiwan in the first half of this year at the invitation of its ministry of foreign affairs.

In a recent article for Foreign Policy magazine, Navarro said Barack Obama’s treatment of Taiwan had been “egregious”, adding: “This beacon of democracy in Asia is perhaps the most militarily vulnerable US partner anywhere in the world.”

Paul Haenle, the head of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre in Beijing, said the call would serve as “a reality check” for many in Beijing who had expected Trump would be transactional and pragmatic leader who might begin a US retreat from Asia and would not challenge China on issues such as human rights.

Trump’s unpredictable moves now threatened to inject fresh uncertainty into Washington-Beijing ties.

“Former president George W. Bush, who I worked for as China director on the National Security Council staff, always operated from a principle of ‘no surprises’, which he believed was a key stabilising feature in the relationship with China,” said Haenle, a veteran US diplomat.



“The alternative – catching China by surprise on some of the most sensitive and longstanding areas of disagreement in our relationship – presents enormous risks and potential detriment for this consequential relationship.”

Bishop said Beijing’s immediate reaction would be a “rhetorical explosion” but that the longer-term consequences were altogether more unpredictable. “If the US starts to change the ‘one China’ policy, that puts US-China relations into uncharted territory,” he said.

Speaking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway defended the president-elect’s unorthodox move.



“I’m pretty certain that president-elect Obama spoke to world leaders in preparation for taking over as commander-in-chief,” she said. Pressed that Obama never broke with US diplomatic policy in this way, Conway said Trump was “fully briefed and fully knowledgeable about these issues”.



In a statement on Saturday morning, President Tsai’s office confirmed that the call had taken place at 11pm local time on Friday, and that the conversation had lasted about 10 minutes.

Taiwan’s National Security Council secretary general Joseph Wu, foreign minister David Lee, and acting secretary general Liu Shih-fang, were all present during the call.

The statement said Tsai congratulated the president-elect on his election and was certain his performance would be “outstanding” in office.

The two leaders exchanged “views and ideas” about future governance, in particular focusing on economic development and “strengthening” national defence.

They also discussed the regional situation in Asia and the strengthening of bilateral relations between Taiwan and the US, with Tsai expressing the hope that Washington would continue to support Taipei internationally.

Reaction in Taiwan was muted on Saturday morning, with people completely taken by surprise, said analysts.

“Obviously for Taiwan it’s a good sign as some Taiwanese politicians were a bit worried that the Trump administration would ignore Taiwan,” said Jonathan Spangler from the Taipei-based South China Sea think tank.

The call could also help boost Tsai’s ratings, which have plummeted in her first six months in office. “It shows that she does have the capacity and courage to lead Taiwan,” said Spangler.

Beijing has been scrambling to understand what a Trump White House might mean for already fraught US-China relations since his election last month, with some predicting an unexpected rapprochement and others a trade war.

On Friday Xi Jinping held a 90-minute meeting with Henry Kissinger, a longstanding go-between for Washington and Beijing, in the Chinese capital to discuss relations between the two countries.

According to Xinhua, China’s official news agency, Xi told Kissinger: “China will work closely with the United States at a new starting point to maintain the smooth transition of ties and stable growth”.

“The two countries should properly handle their different views and divergences in a constructive manner,” Xi reportedly added.

That relationship is likely to be come under sudden and renewed strain in the wake of Trump’s call with Tsai.



“This adds a level of risk to US-China relations that we haven’t seen in a very long time,” said Bishop.

“This is the third rail of US-China relations. For Trump to come in and basically look like he is setting aside decades of US policy towards [China/Taiwan] relations has to be quite worrisome for them. There is a lot of uncertainty about what Trump is going to do.

“It’s unclear who his advisers are, although certainly the ones who have been named have argued over the years for the US to change the relationship we have with Taiwan; to make the US-Taiwan relationship more important and upend the one China policy that we have had in place since the 1970s. So this could set off a lot of alarm bells in Beijing.”

In the lead-up to Friday’s call with Tsai, Trump’s team had reportedly been looking into the possibility of investing in luxury hotels in Taiwan.

In mid-November the mayor of Taoyuan, a city in northwest Taiwan, confirmed that a representative of the president-elect had flown into his city to examine business opportunities at Aerotropolis, a sprawling development of luxury waterside homes and industrial parks near its international airport.

The Taiwan News website reported that Eric Trump, the incoming president’s son, was also planning a trip to Taiwan this year.