The United States, in order to maintain its international status and national interests, does not allow China to challenge its hegemony, and the Taiwan card is an important means for the United States to contain China. The United States has thought about selling out Taiwan, but as a bargaining chip, this card is rapidly losing its effectiveness, according to senior Hong Kong commentator Shi Qiping recently.
The United States cannot afford not to be the boss. Since the second half of the last century, the foundation of U.S. global hegemony has been built on a positive cycle of “U.S. debt, U.S. military, and U.S. dollar”, i.e. “U.S. debt supports U.S. military, U.S. military supports U.S. dollar, and U.S. dollar supports U.S. debt”. If any link is broken, the cycle will collapse all together. Therefore, once the U.S. is no longer the boss, it cannot even be the second, third or fourth. Therefore, Shi Qiping believes that the United States must vigorously suppress any opponent that threatens its boss status. It was the same with Britain, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union in the last century, and it must be the same with China now, and there is no room for compromise.
However, the United States has not been able to contain the rise of China since 2009, since Barack Obama came to power and adopted a return to the Asia-Pacific strategy for China, to the Indo-Pacific strategy of the Trump era and then to the current Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy.
And China’s rise continues to gain momentum and is becoming more and more comprehensive. Under the U.S. suppression and blockade, China has developed Beidou global navigation system, early warning aircraft, aircraft carrier blocking cable, space station, suborbital reusable aircraft and so on. In addition, the rapid rise of China has threatened to impact every link of the U.S. cycle of “U.S. debt, U.S. military, and U.S. dollar”.
Therefore, in such a situation, the U.S. has only three cards left in its hand: the Xinjiang human rights card, the virus origin hunt card, and the Taiwan exchange card.
The Xinjiang human rights card has a limited effect, similar to the situation in Hong Kong, the United States can not make a strong effort, its fist hit the ‘cotton’; the virus origin hunt card is an edged sword, which may hurt itself and will inevitably further deteriorate the relations between the two countries; the last remaining is the Taiwan exchange card, but does the Taiwan card really work? Shi Qiping thinks that perhaps the best opportunity has been missed.
Shi Qiping revealed that the current National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan appointed by President Joe Biden of the United States served as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Office Director in 2011 during the Obama era. WikiLeaks published in 2016 revealed a secret: In an email sent by Jake Sullivan to Hillary Clinton, Jake Sullivan quoted a naval officer’s “abandoning Taiwan theory”, suggesting that the United States should abandon Taiwan in exchange for offsetting the 1.14 trillion US dollars debt held by China. Hillary replied at the time: “I have read it and think it is a smart suggestion, we can discuss it.”
Years later, in September 2019, he and Campbell, the former assistant secretary of state for Asia-Pacific and now Biden’s director of Indo-Pacific coordination, co-authored “Competition Without Disaster” in Foreign Affairs magazine, in which they said, “Given the complex history involved in Taiwan, a tacit agreement that does not unilaterally change the status quo may be the best possible state of affairs.” But this may be Jake Sullivan’s rosy hope. In May 2020, he said that “perhaps this year or next year, China may take some kind of ‘asymmetric military action’ against Taiwan. It seems that Jake Sullivan has always had a pretty accurate grasp of U.S.-China relations, Taiwan’s role in them, and the changing situation in the Taiwan Strait. But does he has any new observations and views on the Taiwan Strait situation and Sino-US relations after another year or so, especially after being a national security advisor and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Alaska in March of this year, when he had a hard time with Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi?
Shi Qiping believes that Jake Sullivan has a sense that “the momentum is gone” with regard to Sino-US relations and the role of the Taiwan card in Sino-US relations.
At the beginning of reform and opening up in 1979, Deng Xiaoping decided that “economic construction would be the priority”, so China’s national defense took a back seat and military development lagged behind. As a result, China faced four military challenges during Jiang Zemin’s tenure: the Yinhe incident between China and the United States in 1993, the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996, the bombing of the Chinese ambassador in Yugoslavia in 1999, and the South China Sea collision in 2001, and China was either at a disadvantage or struggled to cope with them.
Since the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, Beijing has decided to step up its military development and has regularly increased its military spending to a double-digit growth rate, at least more than the economic growth rate. This trend has continued for 25 years, from the Hu Jintao era to the Xi Jinping era. The modernization of China’s armaments has been effective, and since Xi Jinping took office in 2013, he has built on this foundation with strong anti-corruption efforts, island-building in the South China Sea, and military reform, all of which have been made possible by strong economic growth. A country’s continued development of its military over a 25-year period is unprecedented in peacetime and must be highly targeted.
The mainland China people’s antipathy towards Taiwan’s independence situation continues to rise, and there is a strong public sentiment for a speedy solution to the Taiwan issue. To a large extent, these public opinions and sentiments are being deliberately moderated and cooled off by the government.
The former and subsequent commanders of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command have predicted that China will reunify Taiwan by force within six years or sooner, while Jake Sullivan has judged that it is likely to happen in the next two years.
The “Taiwan card” will not always be on the table. Let’s talk about the dynamic theoretical analysis of the effectiveness of the “Taiwan card” as a bargaining chip for the United States. Simply put, in the Western Pacific, if U.S. military strength is much greater than China’s, then the Taiwan card is highly effective; if the two sides are similar or equal in strength, then the Taiwan card becomes less effective; if China’s strength is already superior to that of the U.S., and the gap is still widening, then the Taiwan card loses its effect.
Therefore, the window of time for the U.S. to play the Taiwan card is limited and fleeting. As to whether it is still within the window, Jake Sullivan probably knows it.