This article was originally published by the Global Taiwan Institute.
At the recently concluded Olympic Games in Paris, spectators were once again reminded that geopolitics and sports often go hand in hand. For Taiwanese athletes, this again meant the ritual humiliation of competing under the fictional name of “Chinese Taipei.” Taiwanese Olympians are forced to compete under a fictional flag and national anthem and are subjected to the additional indignity of the organizers unceremoniously confiscating any Taiwan-branded items in the stands. This sad state of affairs only provided fuel to the pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) propagandists and their fellow travelers.
In practice, there was little difference in the International Olympic Committee’s treatment of Taiwan and Russia and Belarus—nations that were suspended for the Games because of their ongoing war against Ukraine but whose athletes were still allowed to compete as “individual neutral athletes.”
The Olympics are a classic case of the international community’s moral blinders when it comes to Taiwan, where one of the world’s freest democracies and the “only democracy on Chinese soil” is continually treated like a bully, not the bullied.
The Origins
Taiwan’s Olympic experience is a glaring reason why the United States, as a matter of policy, should seek to change the gross mistreatment of Taiwan and the Taiwanese people in the international arena. This is why Congress unanimously passed the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement (TAIPEI) Act four years ago. Then-President Donald Trump signed it into law on March 20, 2020.
The TAIPEI Act was originally drafted and introduced in September 2018 by a bipartisan group of senators to stem Taiwan’s loss of international allies. Beijing began to aggressively poach after Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) election as president of Taiwan in 2016.
On May 20, 2016, when then-President Tsai assumed office, 22 nations maintained full diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Between President Tsai’s inauguration and the introduction of the TAIPEI Act, five nations ended their diplomatic relations with Taiwan under PRC duress: São Tomé and Príncipe in 2016; Panama in 2017; and, in rapid succession in 2018, the Dominican Republic, Burkina Faso, and El Salvador—the latter only two weeks before the TAIPEI Act’s introduction.
By the time the bill made its way through Congress in 2019 and was finally signed into law, two more nations (the Solomon Islands and Kiribati) ended their diplomatic ties with Taipei. In three short years, Taiwan’s formal global recognition footprint had shrunk by a third.
The Tools
The TAIPEI Act’s proposed remedy for this alarming state of affairs was straightforward: As a matter of urgent priority, the United States should be actively—and assertively—involved in: 1) preventing the loss of Taiwan’s formal diplomatic allies; 2) encouraging Taiwan’s informal global relationships; and 3) supporting Taiwan’s participation in international organizations, especially those in which nationhood was not a requirement and the United States was a member. In so doing, the United States would take positive actions toward nations that are friendly to Taiwan and take certain negative actions against those who were not.
These provisions were, by and large, more forceful restatements of already-existing requirements under US law, starting with Section 4(d) of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and reinforced by subsequent legislation, including the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (ARIA) of 2018, among others. Supporting Taiwan’s international participation had already been established as official US policy, and, at least in theory, should have been part of the US State Department’s routine diplomatic practice. What the TAIPEI Act sought to address was the motivation and the political will of the US executive branch to execute these policies appropriately—and, most importantly, to execute them effectively.
The TAIPEI Act, which passed unanimously in both chambers, should have clearly signaled to the State Department that it needed to get its act together before it was too late. The bill also required the administration to produce an annual report on US efforts to help Taiwan. According to congressional sources consulted by the authors, this report has indeed been produced and delivered to Congress, but never publicly disclosed.
The Results
While the TAIPEI Act was still in the legislative process and in the months after it became law, the Trump Administration laid important groundwork for its implementation. In December 2019, during his nomination hearing, the future US Ambassador to Palau John Hennessey-Niland stated that the TAIPEI Act would be “a very important contribution to supporting allies as Palau.” Ambassador Hennessey-Niland eventually became the first sitting US Ambassador to visit Taiwan in March 2021 since 1979.
As the Biden Administration assumed office in January 2021, US policy toward Taiwan became marked with contradictions. President Joe Biden’s strong statements in support of Taiwan were followed by “clarifications” that would often entirely contradict those strong statements.
Beijing has seen this US hesitancy and incoherence on Taiwan as a sign of weakness and has continued to press on, unabated, to restrict Taiwan’s international policy space. As a result, three more nations have ended their formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan so far during the Biden Administration: Nicaragua in 2021, Honduras in 2023, and Nauru earlier this year. According to author conversations with high-level Taiwan officials, little to no US diplomatic effort was expended to prevent these losses. After Nauru’s switch, the State Department issued a statement calling it a “sovereign decision,” albeit a “disappointing one.”
Likewise, the situation did not improve Taiwan’s access to international organizations, including specialized United Nations (UN) agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Civil Administration Organization (ICAO), where the PRC has successfully continued to block Taiwan’s access. The pressure was not just limited to UN agencies. In August 2023, the Central American Parliament expelled Taiwan as an observer after two decades and installed the PRC in its place.
Despite some notable activities, the Biden Administration seems to have limited itself to public statements and bilateral discussions when it came to preventing Taiwan’s diplomatic losses. For instance, Secretary of State Antony Blinken in 2021 called on UN members to support Taiwan’s participation. And, in 2022, the State Department convened a high-level bilateral working group with Taiwan government officials on Taiwan’s participation in international organizations, which the parties have maintained since on a biannual basis.
This lackadaisical approach has clearly raised additional concerns in Congress, which sought to build on the TAIPEI Act to keep up the pressure on the administration as well as send a strong message to Beijing.
Congress enacted the Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act (TERA) as part of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Action (NDAA), signed into law in December 2022. TERA further enhanced the TAIPEI Act’s provisions, including stating that it is US policy to “support Taiwan’s diplomatic relations with governments and countries.”
Section 5518 of the FY2023 NDAA also required the administration to provide Congress with a “strategy to support Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations” 180 days after enactment of the bill, or by June 2023. The strategy was to include several specific components, such as a list of “no more than 20” international organizations that the administration would prioritize for “using its voice, vote, and influence” to advocate for Taiwan, as well as the “diplomatic strategies and coalitions” the administration plans to develop to achieve these goals. The bill allowed the administration to submit the report in classified form, with an unclassified annex. As there is no public record of the strategy, it was likely produced only as a classified document, if it was produced at all.
The Remedies
It is clear that the Biden Administration’s efforts to help Taiwan in the international arena have not successfully deterred Beijing, despite the clear mandate under the TAIPEI Act and subsequent legislative efforts. The next US administration, whether Republican or Democrat, must take the lessons of the past four years and seek to chart a new course.
The next administration should seek to fully implement the spirit and the letter of the TAIPEI Act, including Section 5(a), which states that the United States should consider “increasing its economic, security, and diplomatic engagement with nations that have demonstrably strengthened, enhanced, or upgraded relations with Taiwan” while, inversely, “altering its economic, security, and diplomatic engagement with nations that take serious or significant actions to undermine the security or prosperity of Taiwan.”
Understandably, the United States cannot base its entire foreign policy around its support for Taiwan, especially considering the inconvenient fact that the United States has not maintained diplomatic relations with the island since 1979. Yet it can certainly take specific decisive actions, both in private and public, to leverage sizable US influence to affect Taiwan’s relationship with the outside world.
The next administration should also work hand in hand with Congress to implement a sound and sustainable strategy to expand Taiwan’s international space and to protect its current memberships. As suggested in a recent paper by the Heritage Foundation’s Brett Shaefer, “this [strategy] might require countering Chinese financial incentives with US and Taiwanese investments,” which is a reflection of the transactional reality of global affairs from which Taiwan is not immune.
Time is of the essence. As we wrote after Taiwan’s presidential elections earlier this year, the United States “must not allow the Chinese Communist Party to bully Taiwan because Taiwan’s future is essential to U.S. national security and economic prosperity.” The last thing we want is for Henry Kissinger’s famous quip that “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal” to become a reality with regard to our friends in Taipei.
The main point: Passed in 2020, the TAIPEI Act was intended to stem Taiwan’s loss of international allies and to incentivize the United States to act. Since then, however, the Act has failed to deter Beijing’s diplomatic aggression against Taiwan because it was not adequately implemented by the executive branch. The next US administration should take active steps to fully implement the spirit and the letter of the Act.
