As U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet in Washington this week, the Taiwan Strait, the waterway that has long been a flashpoint between the two countries, has seemed remarkably quiet. Chinese fighter jets regularly cross the centerline between Taiwan and the mainland. Chinese warships maneuver to the east of the island. And Beijing uses its coast guard to continually harass ships in the area. Yet for nearly a year, Beijing has avoided the large-scale military exercises that had become a regular feature of its coercion of Taiwan after former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island, in 2022.

That shift stems in large part from renewed optimism in Beijing. Although the Trump administration has not formally changed its policy toward Taiwan, Trump’s statements after his prior meeting with Xi in May undermined Taipei’s confidence in the United States’ commitment to the island. “I’m not looking to have somebody go independent,” he said at the time. “And, you know, we’re supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war. I'm not looking for that.”

For years, many in Washington and across the Asia-Pacific region assumed that 2027 would be the next potential pivot point for Beijing’s Taiwan policy, because Xi had directed the People’s Liberation Army to be prepared for a cross-strait military confrontation by that date. Yet as 2027 approaches, it appears exceedingly unlikely that Xi is gearing up to employ lethal force any time soon. Xi has been willing to conduct systematic purges of his military high command, in part because he is not worried about a cross-strait crisis in the near future. For now, Xi seems to feel confident that he can effectively manage both Washington and Taipei.

But Xi remains deadly serious about organizing his force for a conflict over Taiwan in the coming years. The next pivotal date will not be 2027, when Xi is expected to begin a fourth term, but 2028, when both the United States and Taiwan will hold presidential elections that will determine the future trajectory of the cross-strait dynamic. In all likelihood, Xi will find himself frustrated by the outcome of Taiwan’s next election, which will make the situation more fraught than it is now. The coming two years are thus a crucial window for Washington to work with Taipei to prepare for what will likely be a far more turbulent period in the Taiwan Strait after 2028.

Rather than let doubts about its support for Taipei deepen, Washington should lean into its relationship with the island. In many ways, Taiwan has refashioned itself into a model partner, both by reorienting its economy toward the United States and away from China and by boosting investments in its own defense. At the very least, Trump should approve the $14 billion arms package that is on his desk, even if that means dividing the sale into smaller tranches to avoid escalating tensions with Beijing.

China will not welcome a series of U.S. arms sales, but historically Beijing has shown far more concern for high-profile gestures of political support for Taiwan, such as Pelosi’s visit, than over the bureaucratic details of U.S. weapons transfers. And leaving arms sales in abeyance carries its own long-term costs. By forgoing this minimum step, the administration will be complicit in Beijing’s bid to establish a veto over U.S. arms sales and, by extension, over the cross-strait dynamic. After 2028, the diplomatic price of such support for Taipei is likely to rise, as an aging Xi may conclude that further delay on Taiwan no longer works in his favor.

Xi’s optimism is predicated on the hope that the opposition Kuomintang party (KMT) will regain power in 2028 after a dozen years of rule by the Democratic Progressive Party, which the mainland reviles as separatist. Beijing has had no visible engagement with the government since the DPP came to power in 2016—a marked departure from Xi’s approach to the previous administration. In 2015, Xi became the first Chinese leader since Mao Zedong to shake hands with his Taiwanese counterpart, a precedent he must have relished. Yet rather than becoming part and parcel of what Xi and his propagandists call the “new era” for China under his rule,........

© Foreign Affairs