US-PRC-Taiwan Relations under the Trump Administration

Co-sponsored by the Taiwan Democracy Project at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and the China Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC)

Abstract

As President Trump assumes office, it is timely to consider the state of US-People's Republic of China (PRC)-Taiwan relations and how they might evolve in the coming years. Uncertainty regarding US-PRC-Taiwan relations is running high—it is far greater than eight years ago when Barack Obama assumed office. Trump’s phone call with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen shortly after winning the election and his subsequent suggestion that Taiwan could be used as a bargaining chip to extract trade concessions from China have alarmed Beijing and created anxiety in Taipei. In Washington, Trump’s actions and statements have fueled policy debates about whether to abandon the “one China” policy which has been a mainstay of US policy for 37 years.  How the Trump administration will adjust relations with Beijing and Taipei is unknown. In the months ahead, a new dynamic may be created in the US-PRC-Taiwan triangular relationship in which the source of instability is neither China nor Taiwan, but rather is the United States. 

Biography

Bonnie S. Glaser is a senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at CSIS, where she works on issues related to Chinese foreign and security policy. She is concomitantly a non-resident fellow with the Lowy Institute in Sydney, a senior associate with CSIS Pacific Forum and a consultant for the U.S. government on East Asia. From 2008 – mid-2015 Ms. Glaser was a Senior Adviser with the Freeman Chair in China Studies, and from 2003 to 2008, she was a senior associate in the CSIS International Security Program. Prior to joining CSIS, she served as a consultant for various U.S. government offices, including the Departments of Defense and State.

Ms. Glaser has written extensively on various aspects of Chinese foreign policy, including Sino-U.S. relations, U.S.-China military ties, cross-Strait relations, China’s relations with Japan and Korea, and Chinese perspectives on missile defense and multilateral security in Asia. Her writings have been published in the Washington Quarterly, China Quarterly, Asian Survey, International Security, Problems of Communism, Contemporary Southeast Asia, American Foreign Policy Interests, Far Eastern Economic Review, Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, New York Times, and International Herald Tribune, as well as various edited volumes on Asian security. Ms. Glaser is a regular contributor to the Pacific Forum quarterly Web journal Comparative Connections. She is currently a board member of the U.S. Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, and a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Institute of International Strategic Studies. She served as a member of the Defense Department’s Defense Policy Board China Panel in 1997. Ms. Glaser received her B.A. in political science from Boston University and her M.A. with concentrations in international economics and Chinese studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.