We don't expect US to come to our rescue says Taiwanese diplomat
Vincent Chin-Hsiang Yao said Taiwan had learned the lessons of the Ukraine war.
Taiwan’s chief diplomat in the UK Vincent Chin-Hsiang Yao said his country did not expect the United States to ride to its rescue, should China try and take control of the island.
Yao said such an event would be ‘disastrous’ for the global economy and that allies should tell China’s President Xi Jinping that his country would suffer if he tried to reunify the democratic island with force.
Yao told an event hosted by the London-based think tank Council on Geostrategy that Taiwan had learnt the lessons of the Ukraine war and wanted to be able to defend itself if required.
‘Our policy is never that we expect the United States to come to our rescue,’ he said.
‘We don’t want to rely — our security and our safety — on the probable intervention … from our allies and partners.
‘Instead, we want our allies and partners to help Taiwan defend ourselves.’
But when pressed by Latika Takes, Yao said: ‘I’m not saying no country would take no action in a contingency in the Taiwan Strait.’
US President Joe Biden has said his Administration would defend Taiwan if Xi used military force.
However, Donald Trump, the likely Republican Presidential candidate has been more ambiguous, saying he wouldn’t say what he would do whilst complaining that Taiwan cannibalised the US chip industry.
Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton recounted in his book The Room Where It Happened that Trump seemed willing to throw Taiwan under a bus when President.
‘One of Trump's favourite comparisons was to point to the tip of one of his Sharpie [markers] and say, “this is Taiwan,” then point to [his desk in the Oval Office] and say, “This is China”.’
Yao was not asked about Trump’s position but did note that while Taiwan had bipartisan backing from Republicans and Democrats, support for Ukraine was ‘wavering.’
The Biden Administration has struggled to get Congressional approval to deliver more funding to Kyiv so that Ukraine can continue fighting Russia, nearly two years on from the full-scale invasion.
Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky has constantly struggled to secure the Western weapons he says he needs to win.
And there are fears that if Trump wins the White House, he will end military support altogether and force Ukraine to the negotiating table with Russian President Vladimir Putin, weakening Kyiv’s hand.
Yao said Taiwan had watched how the Ukraine war had transpired and wanted to build its own indigenous defence capability through locally-made weapons and purchases from allies. Last year Taiwan unveiled its first home-made submarine.
‘We learned from the war in Ukraine,’ Yao said.
‘We also like to build our own whole-of-society defence system, try to learn from our friends in central and eastern European nations and the Baltic states and strengthen the resilience of our defence capability.’
Australian retired Major General Mick Ryan and author of Futura Doctrina said Taiwan had made progress but had a long way to go.
‘Ukraine has been a shock,’ the White Sun War author said.
‘Many senior Taiwanese think their young people lack the will to defend Taiwan.’
But he said this was no different to what the Ukrainians had thought of their youth before February 2022 and what many American leaders had feared of their younger generations in the 1930s.
‘Will is critical, and I think the Taiwanese would find it,’ Ryan said.
But he warned: ‘The Chinese will do far worse to them than the Russians have to the Ukrainians.’
He said Taiwan would need the help of Japan and the US for its industrial capacity adding that Australia’s Defence Force was years away from being an effective one.
Yao reminded attendees at his talk that the first military aid Taiwan received from the United States since 1979 when the US switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, was only last year.
Last August, the Biden Administration sent $80 million in military financing to Taiwan using a program that had only ever before been used to send aid to sovereign nations.
The US adheres to the One China Policy which recognises that there is only one Chinese government. It and many other countries, including the UK, subsequently hold only unofficial ties with Taiwan.
Yao said the war in Ukraine had delayed the delivery of F-16 fighter jets and Stinger missiles that were promised to Taiwan by the United States.
But he said Taiwan was Ukraine’s biggest supporter and urged Congress to continue supporting Kyiv because they were fighting for democracy including Taiwan’s.
Yao said another way Taiwan’s partners could help was to tell Xi to his face that China would also ‘suffer’ from an invasion and cited Bloomberg Economics estimates that a war over Taiwan could involve a $10 trillion shock to the global economy.
‘The outcome would be disastrous,’ he said.
Last year, the then UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly revealed he had told his Chinese counterpart that a conflict with Taiwan would collapse China’s economy and many of those dependent on it.
‘I have said this multiple times and directly to the Chinese government, disruption across the Taiwan Strait is everybody’s business,” Cleverly told an event on the sidelines of the 2023 Conservative Party conference in Manchester.
‘It would be a catastrophically bad thing for the global economy, and it would be a catastrophically bad thing for the Chinese economy.
‘Conflict across the Taiwan Strait would, I think, collapse the Chinese economy and bring a number of other economies with it.’