The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s passage of the so-called Taiwan Policy Act marks another dangerous step towards a green light being given to the country providing direct military assistance to the Chinese island.
The US has sold weapons to Taiwan for decades, but the new bill goes further, providing US security assistance of $4.5 billion to the island over four years, and also establishing sanctions on the Chinese mainland if it resorts to the use. of force to carry out national reunification.
While the White House has not said whether President Joe Biden will sign the bill, the strong bipartisan support he has garnered in Congress could force his hand if it passes a full vote in the Senate and House of Representatives, with sufficient support expected to override a presidential veto.
If that happens, it will not only be a move by the US side to unilaterally change the status quo of the Taiwan Strait, but also a decisive incident in the development of Sino-US relations, as it will seriously tread the red line drawn by Beijing, representing a serious and direct threat to China’s main national interests.
It would also violate the commitments the US made to Beijing on establishing diplomatic relations, as the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office would be renamed the Taiwan Representative Office, becoming a de facto embassy, and the US government would instructed to interact with Taiwan as it would any government.
The content of the law essentially negates the three Sino-American joint communiqués, which are binding under international law. It exposes that international law is nothing more than a joke to Washington. If he randomly tramples on the basic norms of international relations and is unwilling to honor his words, how can the US have the trust of the international community?
Senator Bob Menendez, a Democratic Party member who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the US “does not seek war or heightened tensions with Beijing” and “we are carefully and strategically reducing the existential threats facing Taiwan, increasing the cost of taking the island by force so that it becomes a very high and unattainable risk.”
This shows that US lawmakers dangerously underestimate Beijing’s determination and ability to prevent the island from being separated from the motherland. What the Act will do if it becomes law will simply turn the island into another US representative in a war that some of its lawmakers seem eager to start.
