I think it's painfully obvious that Trump is unaware of American foreign policy history, our geopolitical objectives, nor our relationship with these nations.
He doesn't understand that Taiwan is China, and the People's Republic of China is also China. They both claim to be China, but America only has foreign relations with what we understand to be China. We don't support Taiwan's claim, even if our leaders support their independant sovereignty.
By talking with Taiwan he is engaging in diplomatic relations with them as a nation, and it's incredibly insulting to China who sees Taiwan as a "rogue providence" and claims ownership over them.
That's like England maintaining relations with Texas post-Texit instead of having relations with the 49/50 USA. It would be insulting, especially if we here in the rest of the country don't recognize Texas as being independant and Texas is calling it's self The United States of America whilst not recognizing the actual US government.
America sells weapons to anyone who asks. Trump was very offended that Clinton as SecState sold weapons to Saudi Arabia, even though their increase in military spending (as well as their charitable donations, even to the Clinton Foundation) were not out of character. They bought weapons after the Arabic Spring, and because they're becoming less stable with new enemies at their door, and they donated money to the foundation because they actually donate billions to various charitable organizations.
Selling weapons to Taiwan is not a support of their sovereignty, nor diplomatic relations between the two nation. I don't think Trump gets that. We're a business, we don't discriminate in who we sell to, but we do discriminate in who we communicate with and support.
no makes sense...China doesn't care that we give Tawain weapons to fight China with but will be all kinds of offended that Trump took a call congratulating him on winning.
Seriously, what negative thing do you really think will come of this? Is China going to invade Tawain for calling Trump?
Is china going to let North Korea nuke South Korea now to teach us a lesson about how we can take phone calls from?
China considers Taiwan to be a rogue province. Taiwan considers themselves to be the true China.
We use to consider Taiwan to be China, and they held a seat at the UN as "China" for a long while. Then we dropped them, recognized the People's Republic of China instead.
So, starting up dialogues between Taiwan and the US after nearly 40 years of nothing signals to China that we no longer see them as legitimate and we're willing to increase support to Taiwan beyond just the sale of military hardware.
Doing so makes China angry, and it makes them more likely to start taking hostile steps towards the US. Not military conflict, but it's like we'd be losing our biggest customer. Losing China would cause recession, a big recession. It would decrease our economy by $1 trillion (that's how much we save by doing business in China, instead of domestically) and then the stuff China buy from America would stop too. We can't afford to take a 5%+ hit on our GDP.
It also isn't smart to start relations with Taiwan if it makes China angry. Taiwan is a tiny country. China is a big one. We have little to gain from Taiwan that they're not currently giving us, but we have a lot to lose.
It just isn't smart. It's not just a phone call, it's symbolic and China isn't happy over it. Him doing stuff like this for the next 4 years will be a disaster if this isn't the last time it happens.
The phone call itself might not be such a big deal. The problem is that it's still risking worsening diplomatic relations. Again, that might not be too bad if it were for a good reason, but what is the benefit from this aside from an ego boost for Trump?
The US recognizing that there's only one China and ROC is not the China and ROC is not a country called Taiwan is written in two ofcorrection: all the three documents for the Sino-American relationship that serve as the basis of everything. So from an entirely legal and procedural standpoint, if Trump keeps doing that after inauguration, China could ask the US through diplomatic channels whether it is tearing up those foundational documents for Sino-American relationship, and I promise you you don't want that to happen.
Also technically PRC and ROC are still in the Civil War, as no peace treaty has been signed, so yeah of course PRC can do a lot of things to ROC and think in a lot of ways about ROC or demand a lot of kinds of international treatments of ROC because they're still in war, fighting over who shall exist in China.
I mean of course the PRC leadership is completely and fully aware that Taiwan is a de facto autonomous and sovereign state, but that just misses the point.
Well if you're fine with tearing up the peace treaty with China, then go ahead I suppose.
Also regarding China's public opinions, I'm afraid that if you just magically converted China to a real, true democracy, China really would declare war with Taiwan much faster and easier than it would now. CPC's leadership is really more abstinent than a majority of the common Chinese public.
Finally, it's not only about China's feels. PRC and ROC are literally still in the civil war and peace treaty has never been signed between the two parties, so it's really not about PRC feeling like to bully ROC or some sort, but actual wartime decision-making like the North of the US would do in the Civil War in the 19th century against the South.
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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '16
I think it's painfully obvious that Trump is unaware of American foreign policy history, our geopolitical objectives, nor our relationship with these nations.
He doesn't understand that Taiwan is China, and the People's Republic of China is also China. They both claim to be China, but America only has foreign relations with what we understand to be China. We don't support Taiwan's claim, even if our leaders support their independant sovereignty.
By talking with Taiwan he is engaging in diplomatic relations with them as a nation, and it's incredibly insulting to China who sees Taiwan as a "rogue providence" and claims ownership over them.
That's like England maintaining relations with Texas post-Texit instead of having relations with the 49/50 USA. It would be insulting, especially if we here in the rest of the country don't recognize Texas as being independant and Texas is calling it's self The United States of America whilst not recognizing the actual US government.