TAIPEI, Taiwan — As the U.S. presidential candidates lay out their visions for the country over the next four years, Taiwan is also pondering what impact American policy will have on its future.
Just about 100 miles to the west of Taiwan is China, which claims the small Asian island as its own and has repeatedly to invade it.
Because Taiwan is not officially considered a sovereign nation by most other countries and does not have the ability to conduct normal diplomacy, its current partnership with the U.S. — — has outsize importance for the island.
Here's what Taiwan is looking out for in the U.S. election.
Taiwan is looking for security guarantees
While the U.S. adheres to what it calls “strategic ambiguity” over Taiwan, it is to help the island’s self-defense. In recent years, Washington has of U.S. weapons systems to Taipei.
As rhetoric heats up over whether the U.S. should defend Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion, there over U.S. reliability as a security partner.
A recent in Taiwan found only about a quarter of 1,500 adults polled thought the U.S. was a trustworthy ally, though about 55% said they believed the U.S. would come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a conflict, no matter who is elected U.S. president.
In Taiwan, the sense of confusion and nervousness is palpable, as Beijing ramps up its intimidation.
“What they care about is whether the U.S. has a very explicit commitment to Taiwan's defense, which means [will] the U.S. militarily intervene, instead of just sending signals to Beijing or just sending weapons, arms to Taiwan? People really want to know whether the U.S. Navy or marine forces will help Taiwan to defend itself,” says , a professor of diplomacy at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
Taiwan wants to protect its dominance in semiconductor technology
Taiwan is home to dozens of multinational technological manufacturing and semiconductor giants, including . Its chip industry is now so advanced and critical to the global economy that analysts have nicknamed it that protects the island due to its economic importance. This year, Taiwan nearly $150 billion worth of semiconductor chips that are critical to smartphones and fighter jets alike.
Taiwan is highly attuned to how the next American president will continue to manage a technological rivalry with China, which has resulted in a raft of strict U.S. semiconductor export controls .
Under the Biden administration, the U.S. new semiconductor facilities in the U.S. at unprecedented levels. Taiwan’s TSMC, arguably the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturer, is now in Arizona to take advantage of U.S. subsidies and tax breaks.
The investment has been controversial in Taiwan, where some Taiwanese commentators have suggested that the U.S. is working to weaken Taiwan's computer chip industry by shifting production out of Taiwan. One popular misinformation narrative circulating online even claimed that the U.S. was Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC. There was for either claim.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump has suggested he would pursue retaliatory measures against Taiwan’s semiconductor sector. “They took all of our chip business,” the Republican presidential hopeful said last month.
Taiwan is looking for a stable political partner
In 2016, support in Taiwan for the U.S. Republican Party surged after Trump broke with precedent and took a call from Taiwan’s then-President Tsai Ying-wen shortly after he was elected U.S. president. The call because the U.S. has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and previous American presidents avoided such public, direct contact for fear of angering China.
However, recent comments from the Trump campaign about Taiwan have eroded that support, says Lev Nachman, a political scientist at .
“You know, we're no different than an insurance company,” Trump told Bloomberg Businessweek last month. “Taiwan doesn't give us anything,” he said, going on to that Taiwan pay the U.S. for defense.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller that Taiwan does pay for millions of dollars of U.S.-made arms a year. Taiwan’s premier Cho Jung-tai against Trump’s assertions, saying last month that Taiwan was “willing” to shoulder more on defense.
In the recent Brookings survey, conducted shortly before Biden dropped out of the presidential race, researchers found more respondents supported Biden over Trump.
Yet the greatest share of respondents — about 57% — said they “did not know” or had “no opinion” about who the next U.S. president should be, suggesting ambivalence about both parties’ policies on Taiwan.
Harris has Biden’s foreign policy positions on China, including on its territorial claims in the .
“We can interpret our results as people being like, both Republican and Democratic administration seem to do stuff that is good for Taiwan, so we will take either one,” says , one of the authors of the Brookings survey.
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