The Taiwan Policy Act of 2022
American policy towards China is one from the one-China policy 0f 1972 to the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 to the Propose “Taiwan Policy Act of 2022.”
Will this Propose “Taiwan Policy Act of 2022” succeed?
The Washingtom Post / August 6, 2022 // Bloomberg / August 3, 2022
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan this week heightened tensions between China and the United States. Behind the recent developments, including Beijing’s show of force in response, is a long history of shifting ties and frictions.
US Senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham recently introduced the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022, a 107-page bill that Menendez called a “seminal statement of the United States’ absolute commitment” to China’s Taiwan region. The bill’s focus on an unwarranted “defense partnership” and multibillion dollar security assistance capture the latest bipartisan attempt to interfere in China’s internal affairs. Such attempts to empower Taiwan separatist forces have failed in the past, and the Taiwan Policy Act will be no exception.
Washington’s willingness to consistently endorse and support the motivations of Taiwan independence forces should make a fundamental reality clear: characterizing “the security of Taiwan” a “major non-NATO ally,” and the ability for its people to “determine their own future” as “fundamental to United States’ interests and values” is a preposterous assertion. It serves no other interest than hollowing out and obscuring Washington’s adherence to the one-China principle. That trajectory is unsustainable.
The act arrives at a time when US officials are keen to advance high-level communication between the two countries in the summer. The Biden administration is lobbying Democratic senators to put the brakes on a bill that would alter US policy toward Taiwan, including by designating it as a major non-NATO ally, according to people familiar with the matter.
The legislation also would provide Taiwan with $4.5 billion in military aid, including potentially long-range missiles capable of striking mainland China. This would make the island the fourth-largest recipient of US security assistance, behind only Kiev, Tel Aviv and Cairo.
The upshot is that the White House sees provoking China further as unwise in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island, which triggered an unprecedented crisis in the Taiwan Strait. A Chinese military official warned the situation could lead to “a real war at any point.”
White House At Odds With Lawmakers Over Taiwan Policy Act by Connor Freeman
However, the Taiwan Policy Act runs contrary to those realities, presenting a pretexts of Chinese “aggression and influence campaigns” to justify Senator Graham’s fiction of record-setting military and economic “expansion” with the Taiwan region.
“The White House has significant concerns,” said Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I have significant concerns.”
Murphy said the Foreign Relations panel is delaying work on the legislation until September and it may be rewritten. The committee had planned to vote on the bill Wednesday. The US has treated Taiwan as a major non-NATO ally since the George W. Bush administration. The bill would formalize that designation.
The Biden administration considers the legislation counterproductive and that it would interfere with the decades-old approach of “strategic ambiguity” about whether the US military would defend Taiwan against Communist forces, according to the people, who asked for anonymity because the discussions are private. The US also adheres to a “One China” policy which deems the question of sovereignty over Taiwan as undetermined.
“I’m not sure this is the moment to throw out 40 years of policy,” Murphy said, while adding that “it makes sense for us to draw closer to Taiwan.”
“The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle” Psalm 78:9
And I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning for an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day. Amos 8:9-10
Joel Huan
The Mystery of Ephraim 