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Ongoing reports and analysis

Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Sept. 24 for their second summit this year. The meeting is likely to bring now-familiar jitters both in Taipei and among Washington’s traditional China-policy community. These observers fear that Trump’s deal-making instincts and disinterest in strategy could lead to concessions over Taiwan’s security as a part of a fresh round of horse-trading with Beijing.

Yet even if U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains formally unchanged, a deeper worry should lurk beneath these immediate anxieties. Washington’s long-standing policy of “strategic ambiguity” over its intervention in any conflict over Taiwan appears to be gradually drifting toward a new posture of weaker support. The slow death of strategic ambiguity, in turn, risks miscalculation by China, bringing fresh instability into an already complex and dangerous regional balance.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Sept. 24 for their second summit this year. The meeting is likely to bring now-familiar jitters both in Taipei and among Washington’s traditional China-policy community. These observers fear that Trump’s deal-making instincts and disinterest in strategy could lead to concessions over Taiwan’s security as a part of a fresh round of horse-trading with Beijing.

Yet even if U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains formally unchanged, a deeper worry should lurk beneath these immediate anxieties. Washington’s long-standing policy of “strategic ambiguity” over its intervention in any conflict over Taiwan appears to be gradually drifting toward a new posture of weaker support. The slow death of strategic ambiguity, in turn, risks miscalculation by China, bringing fresh instability into an already complex and dangerous regional balance.

The upcoming meeting will be different from the duo’s last summit in May. Back then, the bulk of their agenda was consumed with hashing out an initial trade deal. With that now done, the next summit will focus on managing what both sides have called a relationship of “constructive strategic stability,” in which the basic contours are agreed—at least on the surface.

Taiwan came up only glancingly during the previous meeting in Beijing.........

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