United States loosens restrictions on Taiwan contacts
WASHINGTON: The State Department said Friday it will make it easier for US officials to meet Taiwanese representatives, defying pressure from China at a time of high tensions.
The US still considers Beijing as China’s legitimate government, consistent with its switch of recognition in 1979, but will do away with some of the convoluted rules that restricted dealings with Taiwan including in-person meetings.
The updated guidance “underscores Taiwan is a vibrant democracy and an important security and economic partner that is also a force for good in the international community,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
“These new guidelines liberalise guidance on contacts with Taiwan, consistent with our unofficial relations,” he said in a statement.
The move by President Joe Biden’s administration formalises increasingly vocal US support for Taiwan, a self-governing democracy, and comes in response to an act of Congress that required a review.
Taiwan’s mission in Washington – officially called the ‘Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US’, rather than an embassy – welcomed the new guidelines, saying they reflected a bipartisan consensus for closer relations.
“Taiwan and the US share a deep and abiding partnership based on our common values and joint interests,” it said, pointing to cooperation on global health, space, trade and democracy promotion.
Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, a staunch critic of Beijing, in his last days in office said he was getting rid of previous guidelines on dealing with Taiwan but not issue new ones, drawing confusion in some quarters on what had changed.
Under the guidelines issued by the Biden administration, US officials will be allowed to invite Taiwanese representatives into government buildings in Washington or attend workinglevel meetings at the Taiwanese mission, both of which were earlier prohibited, a State Department official said.
The US has already begun allowing open interactions with Taiwanese diplomats since Pompeo ended earlier guidance.
The Biden administration last month sent the US ambassador to Palau on a visit to Taiwan to accompany the president of the island nation – one of a dwindling number of countries that recognise Taipei.
Similarly, the acting US ambassador in Japan in March tweeted a picture of himself meeting at his official residence with his Taiwanese counterpart – the type of day-to-day diplomacy that is usually a nonevent but which Washington had previously shied away from with Taiwan for fear of upsetting Beijing.
Senior US officials have periodically visited Taiwan, with former president Donald Trump’s health secretary traveling in August, although Washington has remained careful not to anger China by sending cabinet members involved in national security.
China considers Taiwan, where the mainland’s defeated nationalists fled in 1949 after losing the civil war, to be a territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.