These are times of testing for the people of Taiwan. They confront simultaneous challenges domestically, with China, and with their most important international partner, the United States. If ever there was a moment that called for Washington and Taipei to open new avenues of mutually beneficial cooperation and support, this would be it.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s strategy of \u201ccoercion without violence<\/p>\n
Since former Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen\u2019s election in 2016, Beijing has been pursuing an unrelenting campaign of what my Brookings colleague Richard Bush calls \u201ccoercion without violence<\/a>.\u201d Beijing is working to wear down the confidence of the people of Taiwan in their own future. Beijing uses tactics short of violence to steadily induce a sense of fatalism among Taiwan people that resistance is futile, and that Taiwan eventually will have no choice but to succumb to Beijing\u2019s designs. These tactics include persistent visible military pressure, economic inducements and penalties, diplomatic pressure, covert operations, organized crime, cyber operations, and disinformation.<\/p>\n At her first inauguration, Tsai made a serious effort to assure the People\u2019s Republic of China\u2019s (PRC) leadership that she was committed to maintaining the status quo. She pledged in her 2016 inaugural address<\/a> to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and expressed openness to cross-Strait dialogue. She affirmed she would handle cross-Strait affairs according to the Republic of China Constitution and the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area. This, in effect, meant she would adhere to existing legal frameworks around there being one China and would not pursue formal independence for Taiwan. Tsai also acknowledged the historical fact of interactions between empowered entities from Taiwan and China in 1992 and the spirit of seeking common ground while accepting differences. She also called for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to coexist peacefully.<\/p>\n Beijing treated Tsai like a teacher scolding a student, describing her message as an \u201cincomplete test paper<\/a>\u201d because she did not explicitly recognize the \u201c1992 Consensus.\u201d Thus, rather than accepting thinly veiled ambiguity, Beijing chose to reject outright anything short of acceptance of its demands. Beijing then pivoted toward its campaign of \u201ccoercion without violence,\u201d a campaign that has continued uninterrupted ever since.<\/p>\n Tsai was\u2014and is\u2014a highly adaptive thinker. She is globally aware of the impacts of her words and actions. She is thoughtful and methodical, a trade negotiator by training, who measures twice and cuts once.<\/p>\n Enter President Lai Ching-te<\/p>\n When Lai Ching-te succeeded Tsai as president in 2024, he had no illusion that progress is possible in lowering cross-Strait tensions or restoring direct cross-Strait dialogue. As Tsai\u2019s premier and later vice president, Lai saw firsthand the efforts Tsai made to try to manage cross-Strait tensions and Beijing\u2019s unwillingness to reciprocate. Regardless of what Tsai said or did, Beijing applied more pressure and greater efforts to isolate Taiwan on the world stage. Lai\u2019s governance record largely reflects his expectation that Beijing will use a one-way ratchet to increase pressure on Taiwan so long as he is president, regardless of what he says or does.<\/p>\n Rather than attempting to play nice with Beijing, Lai instead has focused on shoring up Taiwan\u2019s vulnerabilities, including by strengthening efforts to curb China\u2019s ability to influence politics and public opinion in Taiwan. Such efforts have contributed to rising political heat inside Taiwan, where the main opposition parties control a narrow majority in Taiwan\u2019s Legislative Yuan. Taiwan\u2019s competing political parties have long pursued efforts to tilt the rules of the political game to their own advantage. As part of this pattern, over the past year, the Legislative Yuan adopted laws to expand the legislature\u2019s powers to balance the president. When Taiwan\u2019s constitutional court ruled parts of the laws unconstitutional<\/a>, the legislature passed another law that paralyzed Lai\u2019s ability to confirm enough constitutional court justices to meet the quorum for reaching verdicts.<\/p>\n Taiwan\u2019s political system is in turmoil. Lai\u2019s approval ratings have dropped. So, too, has public sentiment on Taiwan\u2019s future. As The Economist<\/a> recently reported, \u201cMore than 80% of Taiwanese want to keep the \u2018status quo\u2019, but only about 20% think that is possible in the long run, according to Wu Jieh-min of Academia Sinica, Taiwan\u2019s top research institution. Only about 4% of Taiwanese support unification. But asked what they expect to happen rather than what they prefer, about 30% say Taiwan will end up \u2018being unified by mainland China\u2019, 8% more than in 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n For Beijing, these results represent a return on investment for its strategy of \u201ccoercion without violence.\u201d Beijing would far prefer for the people of Taiwan to conclude that their futures would be enhanced by union with China than use force to impose its will on the people of Taiwan. So long as Taiwan\u2019s main political parties are consumed by internal fighting<\/a>, they will lack the unity to confront Taiwan\u2019s principal policy problem, the China challenge.<\/p>\n \u201cAmerica skepticism\u201d on the rise<\/p>\n Beijing\u2019s psychological campaign to wear down the will of the people of Taiwan is being aided by growing perceptions in Taiwan of American unreliability. Sixty percent of people in Taiwan think America is not trustworthy<\/a> under President Donald Trump, according to the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation.<\/p>\n Whereas in the past, there was implicit confidence that Taiwan and the United States were bound by shared values, that is no longer the case under Trump. The Taiwan people also have diminished confidence that the United States would come to the defense of friends under attack, particularly following Trump\u2019s blaming of Ukraine for Russia\u2019s illegal invasion. Trump\u2019s announcement of 32% tariffs<\/a> on Taiwan imports reinforced in Taiwan Trump\u2019s unsentimental and transactional approach to the relationship. There are also lingering anxieties in Taiwan\u2019s policy community that Trump could use Taiwan as a pawn in any future negotiations with Chinese President Xi Jinping. When Washington\u2019s policy approach to Taiwan is riddled with personalized agendas and internal contradictions, America\u2019s own interests suffer, to say nothing of Taiwan\u2019s.<\/p>\n In other words, America\u2019s image<\/a> is fairly battered in Taiwan now. Now is not an opportune moment for American leaders to jawbone<\/a> or publicly dictate to Taiwan\u2019s leaders what they must or must not do. Such calls likely would not go heeded, but they would engender lasting resentments that would diminish American influence over time.<\/p>\n A shared U.S.-Taiwan agenda<\/p>\n Instead, if Washington wishes to preserve a dynamic equilibrium in the Taiwan Strait in the face of China\u2019s unrelenting pressure, it must find effective ways to counterbalance PRC efforts to tilt the status quo in its preferred direction. Given Trump\u2019s ambivalence about ideological arguments and his lack of conviction about defending security partners, any efforts to bolster confidence in Taiwan about its own future must be practical to be persuasive. To be credible, such signals must be grounded in America\u2019s self-interest, rather than high-minded appeals to values or ideology.<\/p>\n There are practical arguments for strengthening U.S.-Taiwan ties, namely that both sides offer what the other side needs<\/a>. Taiwan is short in energy, land, and talent. America has abundance where Taiwan faces scarcity. In other fields, Taiwan is ahead while America lags.<\/p>\n For example, America has the energy capacity to sustain Taiwan\u2019s economic growth and support its energy security. From geothermal to nuclear, liquefied natural gas, and advanced grid technologies, America is resource-rich<\/a>. Taiwan is not. As Taiwan builds cutting-edge fabs, data centers for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, and advanced manufacturing hubs, it will have growing energy demands that America can help meet. America is also the world\u2019s largest market and leading base of research for many advanced technologies. This includes weapons systems Taiwan will need to produce indigenously at scale to bolster its own defense.<\/p>\n