OPINION:
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent back-to-back summits with the leaders of the two most important countries in China’s field of vision show exactly where Mr. Xi stands between them.
Mr. Xi, seeing Russia’s ruler, Vladimir Putin, decried the “unilateral hegemony” that he said was “running rampant” while the U.S. was in danger of “a drift back to the law of the jungle.
Those remarks reinforced Mr. Xi’s impassioned warning to Mr. Trump of “clashes and even conflicts” if Washington sticks by its long-established commitment to defend the island democracy of Taiwan.
The ceremonial displays were much the same, but there was no doubt as to who came out ahead. China counts on Russia for most of its natural gas and much of its oil and is asking Russia to make up for the oil it was also importing through the Strait of Hormuz before the Iran war.
In that spirit, these two leaders of regimes that have stood against America since the Cold War signed a lengthy joint communique proclaiming their tight bond.
No way, of course, could Mr. Xi have come to terms with Mr. Trump on a joint statement. If nothing else, they could never have agreed on the proper verbiage on Taiwan.
Instead, Mr. Trump fawned over Mr. Xi, comparing him in a Fox interview to a Hollywood leading man. Was such flattery calculated to get Mr. Xi to make good on the purchase of Boeing aircraft and farm products while easing restrictions on American firms doing business in China?
Maybe so, but the real test comes on whatever Mr. Trump does for Taiwan. The U.S. commander in chief has said, off the cuff, that he talks “to everyone” and in that spirit might chat with Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te.
Such a conversation would no doubt infuriate Mr. Xi while the Chinese harass the island, 90 miles off the mainland, with ships and planes.
Last Thursday, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said at a Senate hearing that the administration was “doing a pause” on the sale to Taiwan of $12 billion in arms as approved by Congress.
It would have been nice to think, after all the Americans have done for Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, that the commitment of arms to the island nation was ironclad. Instead, he’s putting off a sale that would help guarantee the freedom of Taiwan from mainland control and reassure America’s East Asian allies — Japan, South Korea and the Philippines — that Washington will live up to its obligations.
There are two crucial points to remember here.
Taiwan has never been ruled by communists. The island was seized by Japan in its war with China in 1895 and held by the Japanese until their surrender at the end of World War II in 1945. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist or Kuomintang forces then took over the island.
The Kuomintang ruled Taiwan under martial law for 38 years, executing thousands of rebellious Taiwanese whose ancestors had migrated from the mainland centuries before to get away from imperial rule.
Now the Taiwanese, more opposed than the KMT to the mainland, control the government. Mr. Lai barely disguises his desire for Taiwan’s emergence as an independent state — a move that might indeed provoke Mr. Xi into ordering the invasion of the Island.
We may be sure that if the communists ruled Taiwan, thousands would die both in battles for the island and in roundups of rebellious civilians. The KMT, by historical irony, has been kowtowing to Beijing, urging reconciliation, but the prevailing view is that Taiwan must retain de facto independence as a Chinese province in name only.
The dictatorship China has imposed over the Uyghurs in the northwest and Tibet to the west stands as an example of the far worse retribution that Mr. Xi would inflict on the Taiwanese.
The other reason for sticking up for Taiwan is its place at the heart of “the first island chain,” from the Russian-held Kurils down through Japan and Japan’s southernmost prefecture of Okinawa, to Taiwan, the Philippines and Borneo.
For the sake of Taiwan and defense in the Indo-Pacific, Mr. Trump should end the pause and approve the military sale to Taiwan.
• Donald Kirk is a former Far East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the old Washington Star.
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