Taiwan Denies US Told Officials To Visit Washington Think Tanks Less

With Chinese leader Xi Jinping set to arrive in Washington on the 23rd for this year's second Trump-Xi summit, a New York Times report citing Brookings Institution senior fellow Ryan Hass has raised fresh questions about the state of US support for Taiwan. Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs pushed back on the report Monday, insisting the island maintains good communication with the United States at every level.

Hass, who directed China affairs at the National Security Council under President Barack Obama, told the Times that Taiwanese officials visiting Washington have been told by Trump administration officials to cut back on visits to the city's think tanks. The report noted Taiwan has been working to court people close to Trump, hiring lobbyists and arranging visits by prominent Trump supporters to the island. "All of this exposes President Trump's clear preference," Hass said. "He wants to make sure Taiwan doesn't become an obstacle to his ambitions with China."

The report landed just as a domestic political dispute over Taiwan-US ties was already simmering. Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said in a radio interview last week that Beijing wants to control Trump in order to engineer a US China "condominium" over Taiwan, but argued that good communication between Taipei and Washington actually means the two are working together to manage China, not the other way around. Alexander Chen, director of the Kuomintang's Culture and Communications Committee, seized on the New York Times report to argue the opposite. He pointed to President Lai Ching-te's continued inability to transit through the US mainland, delays in American arms sales to Taiwan, and now reports of restricted think tank visits as warning signs that the relationship faces serious strain, calling the government's description of "the best Taiwan-US relations in history" self-deception.

Asked about the Times report at Monday's regular briefing, ministry spokesperson Hsiao Guang-wei said he could not verify where the information originated. He pointed to a steady stream of Taiwanese officials visiting Washington that has continued to generate public press releases, citing Digital Affairs Deputy Minister Hou Yie-hsiu's trip in June to attend the Pax Silica conference as one recent example, alongside similar visits by other ministries. "We maintain good communication with the United States at every level, to ensure that the Taiwan-US relationship continues to deepen steadily," Hsiao said, adding that the government has continued to explain the relationship publicly and that doing so "is certainly not self-deception."

Hsiao said exchanges between Taiwan and the United States continue across local governments, elected representatives and Congress, and that Taiwanese ministries remain in ongoing contact with their American counterparts on a range of issues through channels he described as consistently open. "So when you say Taiwan-US relations are facing a serious challenge, I don't know what that assessment is based on," he said, referring to Chen's remarks. On the question of a possible US transit for President Lai, Hsiao said any stopover would need to fit around the president's broader travel schedule and would be arranged once the timing was right and the government judged it feasible. On US arms sales, he said Washington has repeatedly stressed that deliveries are still moving forward. "So I don't feel that Taiwan-US relations are currently facing a serious challenge," he said.

Original Article in Chinese

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