The US Department of State’s fact sheet on America’s relationship with Taiwan has recently changed.
References to America’s commitment to the One China Policy, the acknowledgement that Taiwan is “part of China,” were removed, and replaced with a series of paragraphs which instead detailed the importance of America’s relationship with Taiwan as an “Indo-Pacific Partner.” Albeit unofficially.
Beijing was quick to condemn the move publicly, accusing the US of undermining previous agreements. Coinciding with this, a phone call between US Secretary of Defence Llyod Austin and his Chinese counterpart also never mentioned the “One China Policy” on the US readout. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister, Joseph Wu, retweeted the conversation and proclaimed the One China “spell” had been broken.
Although not a new development, the United States, enabled by the context of the Ukraine conflict, sees an opportunity to ramp up tensions over Taiwan and strengthen its hand over the issue. In a process which China has described as “Salami Slicing”, America’s Taiwan position has been to pay lip service to its commitment to the One China Policy upfront, but otherwise subtly move the goalposts by increasing its political, diplomatic and military support to the island in order to weaken Beijing’s actual hand in achieving reunification objectives on its terms.
Such a policy is not of course an explicit endorsement of “Taiwan independence,” which China describes as the “red line” but nonetheless serves to de facto block Beijing from attaining its ambitions. While this has been ongoing since the Trump administration, for a number of reasons, the conflict in Ukraine is now enabling the US to do this more overtly than previously.