Joe Biden vows US will defend Taiwan if China invadesThe United States would defend Taiwan militarily against a Chinese invasion, President Biden has said, setting out a clear challenge to Beijing during his first visit to East Asia as president.
Biden said in Tokyo that one of the reasons President Putin must be made to “pay a dear price” for invading Ukraine was to discourage China from trying to seize the independent island of Taiwan.
Asked whether the US would defend Taiwan militarily, in a way that it has declined to do for Ukraine, Biden told a press conference: “Yes — that’s the commitment we made.
“We agree with the ‘one China’ policy. We signed onto it and all the attendant agreements made from there. But the idea that it could be taken by force, just taken by force — it’s just not appropriate. It will dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine.”
Standing beside the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, after their meeting, Biden said that a strong response to Putin’s “barbarism” was essential to deterring China from invading Taiwan. Beijing argues that the island, a flourishing democracy with its own government, is part of the mainland and must eventually be reunited, by force if necessary.
“It’s not just about Ukraine,” Biden said. “If . . . after all [Putin’s] done, there’s a rapprochement between the Ukrainians and Russia and the sanctions are not continued . . . then what signal does that send to China about the cost of attempting to take Taiwan by force?”
The US, like most countries, officially supports a “One China” policy and does not have official relations with Taiwan. The government is obliged by US law to provide it with the means to defend itself, but its policy towards Taiwan is deliberately unclear. Biden’s remarks suggest a commitment to military defence that goes beyond the established American position.
China objected to Biden’s comments and said it was ready to defend its national interests. “Taiwan is an unalienable part of the Chinese territory. The Taiwan issue is purely a Chinese matter with which no exterior force is allowed to interfere,” a spokesman for the foreign ministry said. He added: “Do not stand on the opposite side of 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
The US provides Taiwan with military equipment but has avoided a commitment to defending it actively of the kind that it makes to treaty allies such as Japan, South Korea and the Nato countries. This “strategic ambiguity” is intended to preserve the status quo by sowing doubt in the mind of the President Xi, while discouraging the Taiwanese from openly declaring independence.
Last year Biden suggested that the US was prepared to fight for Taiwan in unambiguous ways, placing the country in the same category as treaty allies.
The White House quickly moved to limit the repercussions of Biden’s latest remarks. “As the president said, our policy has not changed,” a White House official said. “He reiterated our one China policy and our commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. He also reiterated our commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide Taiwan with the military means to defend itself.”
In Japan, the government has proposed to double its defence budget to about £86 billion, breaking restrictions imposed after the Second World War, as fears grow of threats from China, Russia and North Korea. Its military spending would rise to 2 per cent of GDP, the benchmark set by Nato members.
“Things have changed,” Biden said. “There is a sense among the democracies in the Pacific that there’s a need to co-operate much more closely. Not just militarily, but in terms of economically and politically.”
The Japan Times reported that Kishida would tell Biden that Tokyo was seeking a “counterstrike capability” with mobile or submarine-launched missiles and command and control systems. Biden was expected to assure Japan that it remained part of the US policy of “extended deterrence”, which includes a “nuclear umbrella” to protect allies.
China’s navy has held military exercises near Japan’s southwestern islands, including Okinawa. It has also practised for an invasion of Taiwan, including sending ships this month to “encircle” the island.
Satellite pictures showed shipyards in China expanding. Work on the country’s third aircraft carrier appears to be “almost complete”. Two nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines and another nuclear-powered attack submarine are also under construction.
Ni Lexiong, a maritime expert at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, told the South China Morning Post yesterday that China was trying to move away from its reliance on Russian weapons. He said that many of its “conventional weapons systems and combat concepts have been inherited or copied from the Russian military’s predecessor, the Soviet Union army. The raging fights between the Russians and Ukrainians have put China in an embarrassing situation.”
For the past decade China has made the modernisation of its navy, which is the second biggest after America’s, a key objective. “Construction of a powerful, modern navy is a key sign of building a world-class army,” Xi said this month. “It is a critical part to realise the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
A new shipyard is being built next to the Jiangnan shipyard on the Yangtze River in Shanghai, which has itself been expanded, and new facilities to build submarines have been set up upstream in the central city of Wuhan, according to Naval News, a website based in Paris that focuses on naval defence. A shipyard in Huludao, in the northeastern province of Liaoning, which builds nuclear submarines, has also been enlarged, the website said.
Japan, with India, Australia and America makes up the so-called Quad group, a strategic alliance that is a cornerstone of US attempts to counter China’s influence in the region.
Biden is expected to announce countries that will be members of a new Indo-Pacific trade pact. Officials have said that Taiwan will not be included, dealing a blow to its hopes of closer links with the US. Including Taiwan would have angered China, which does not recognise the island’s right to self-rule and has vowed to bring it under its control.
In an apparent tit-for-tat response to Biden’s trip to Asia, China is seeking to bolster ties with Latin America and negotiate security pacts with Pacific nations.
Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, has been speaking to his counterparts in Uruguay, Ecuador and Nicaragua, telling them that Beijing opposes “some countries clinging to the Cold War mentality and attempting to split the international community through ideological confrontation”.
Not the first time Biden has talked about the USA being willing to defend Taiwan. And not the first time the WH has had to clarify Biden's comments are not an official change of position.
I think it's fair to say a new kind of Cold War has started but this time the junior partner is Russia and the senior partner is China (and the 1st proxy war is in Eastern Europe / Ukraine vs Far East Asia / Korea).
