As mainland China launches live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait and state-owned Beijing media outlets warn of protective military measures, Taipei has waved away the threat, suggesting that the large-scale war exercises are “routine.”
But the administration of US President Donald Trump continues to buck a foreign policy long held by earlier US presidents, that there would be no overt support of Taiwan independence, in spite of military and other forms of ongoing assistance, alongside Washington's trade-war threats.
Trump and his administration appear to be escalating the anger in Beijing, as significant steps by Washington in recent months intending to increase diplomacy with Taipei are seen by China as, at best, regionally destabilizing or, at worst, a provocation to an actual military conflict.
Following his unlikely ascendancy to the US presidency, Trump opened the recent degradation in Sino-US diplomatic relations by accepting a congratulatory telephone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, in contravention of some 40 years of diplomatic protocol.
Trump went so far as to suggest that…
