Taiwan: Saber rattling, salami slicing, and strategic ambiguity, with Shelley Rigger and Simona Grano

Sinica Podcast

Kaiser Kuo

Culture, China News, Hangzhou, Chinese, International Relations, Chongqing, Beijing, Sichuan, Currentaffairs, China, Politics, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, China Economy, News, China Politics, Business, Film, Shenzhen

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2022

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Shelley Rigger of Davidson College returns to the show to talk Taiwan. She's joined by Simona Grano, a sinologist and Taiwan specialist at the University of Zürich. They talk about President Joe Biden's recent "gaffes" that call into question the longstanding, unofficial U.S. policy of "strategic ambiguity," talk about how Taiwan has been impacted by the Ukraine War, and much more.

4:59: – What did Joe Biden's latest "gaffe" on Taiwan actually signify?

10:06 – Did "strategic ambiguity" serve its intended purpose?

16:23 – The mood in Taiwan

20:51 – The impact of the Ukraine War on thinking in Beijing and in Taipei

34:12 – European countries navigating relationships with Taiwan

43:54 – The "One China Principle" versus the "One China Policy"

47:20 – Are bilateral trade agreements enough for Taiwan?

50:27 – Ethnicity, nationality, and the Taiwan issue

59:00 – Making sense of the PRC claim to Taiwan

A complete transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Simona: Orphan of Asia, a novel by Wu Zhuoliu; and the show Orange is the New Black

Shelley: Occupied, a Norwegian thriller series on Netflix

Kaiser: Meizhong.report, a Chinese-language resource from the Carter Center's U.S.-China Perception Monitor, covering official, media, and social media commentary on U.S.-China relations

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Cynica podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China produced in partnership with SUPChina.
0:15.3	Subscribe to SubChina's daily, newly designed China Access newsletter to keep on top of all the latest news from China
0:21.8	from hundreds of different news sources. Or check out all the original writing on our website
0:26.8	at subchina.com. We've got reported stories, essays, and editorials, great explainers and trackers,
0:33.3	regular columns, and of course, a growing library of podcasts.
0:38.1	We cover everything from China's fraught foreign relations to its ingenious entrepreneurs,
0:42.8	from the ongoing repression of leaders and other Muslim peoples in China's Xinjiang region
0:47.3	to China's travails as it wrestles with a surging wave of COVID-19.
0:52.4	It's a feast of business, political, and cultural news
0:55.4	about a nation that is reshaping the world.
0:58.6	We cover China with neither fear nor favor.
1:01.9	I'm Kaiser Guo, coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
1:05.8	The Taiwan issue is very much back in the news in recent months, as if it ever left,
1:12.5	as the unofficial but longstanding American policy of strategic ambiguity seems now to be in doubt following a third
1:18.7	gaffe by President Joe Biden answering a question from a reporter at a Tokyo press conference
1:24.0	on May 23rd, saying that the U.S. would in fact help to defend Taiwan or the
1:29.3	PRC to attack the island. This comes after a long series of move, some of them mainly symbolic,
1:35.9	a few of them arguably more substantive, intended to show American support for Taiwan,
1:41.8	from visits or announced visits or intended visits by ranking politicians,
1:46.5	to a seemingly small proposed change to what the T stands for in the acronym TECRO,
1:52.5	the unofficial rep office of Taipei or maybe Taiwan soon in D.C.
1:59.1	The U.S. is not, of course, the only country where this sort of thing is happening.
	...

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