Tough G7 statement drops ‘one China’ reference from Taiwan language

2 comments

1. >LA MALBAIE, Canada, March 14 (Reuters) – G7 foreign ministers took a tough stance on China on Friday, stepping up language on Taiwan and omitting some conciliatory references from past statements, including to “one China” policies.

   >A statement by ministers meeting in Canada mirrored a February Japan-U.S. statement in condemning “coercion” toward Taiwan, language that heartened Taipei in its increasingly tense standoffs with Beijing.

   Interesting move from the European nations in G7. The events of the last month (Greenland, tariffs, Ukraine) made me think Europe would cozy up to China, to use as leverage against a more detached US. But this statement shows otherwise – nothing sets China off more than allusions to an independent Taiwan.

2. The state department removed similar language from their fact sheet earlier this year. Long term the one China policy was tolerated as a diplomatic way to side step the issue, but both sides have elected to avoid acting on the issue and Taiwan has taken the intervening years to go from a military dictatorship with a people in poverty to a wealthy democracy with a keystone company in a keystone industry. The PRC wants to take the island, but they’d be happy with a Hong Kong like slow digestion or a fast war, right now the bet is they wouldn’t be able to cross the straight in a shooting war with the US, though most of East Asia would burn in the conflict to no one’s benefit. The US and the west have a pragmatic flexibility in that they don’t really care about diplomatic status so long as there isn’t conflict. A diplomatic breakthrough on the status of the island would be great but is a back burner issue that may solve itself with time. China proving hostile with tariffs of their own can erase a lot of goodwill and lead to harsher language like we see here.

Comments are closed.