Taiwan Trip Report

Our collective challenge, Americans and Taiwanese alike, is to maintain the status quo.

Sorry, Substack readers, for my absence, as I just returned from a nine-day trip to Taiwan and didn’t have time to write there. In Taipei, I participated in a conference on all things Taiwan, organized by our new Taiwan Program at the Asia Pacific Research Center—one of the several centers at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute that I currently direct. There, I gave the keynote speech on Trump Foreign Policy 2.0. With the launch of this new program, coupled with the research initiative, Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region, at the Hoover Institution, Stanford now has a lot going on regarding Taiwan. I also stayed longer in Taipei to meet with government officials and business leaders, as it has been three years since I last visited. (You can read about that trip here). I hope to write longer pieces about this trip later, but let me start with some quick impressions.

For officials, especially at the Foreign Ministry and National Security Council, I heard how the threat posed by China has grown. The last time I was in Taiwan was the week after Nancy Pelosi visited. In response to Pelosi’s visit, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had practiced a navy blockade. That moment was very tense. Last week, while I was still in Taipei, there was no such triggering event for heightened tensions, but my interlocutors reported that the pressure was constant, especially regarding violations of Taiwan’s airspace. (This past Tuesday, the PRC held a joint large-scale military exercise involving navy, air, and rocket forces.)

In response, the Taiwanese government has taken many new measures to step up its defense efforts since my last visit three years ago. Most importantly, I heard a lot about efforts to shift greater resources to unmanned systems, learning lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine, and shifting away from larger platforms. They call it a porcupine strategy. But I was also struck by what had not yet been done. Military spending was still below three percent of GDP, military service for men was still only one year, and the government still planned to shut down nuclear power, making the island even more vulnerable to a blockade.

In meetings with government officials, the focus was all on Trump. I counted how long it took before Trump was mentioned, and it rarely was longer than five minutes. In public statements, Taiwanese government officials affirmed continuity in their relations with the United States. And so did the officials of the Trump administration. While I was in Taiwan, Secretary of Defense Hegseth was traveling in the region as well, first in the Philippines and then Japan, making statements that were similar to the Biden administration’s. That was reassuring to the officials I met in Taipei.

Off the record, however, I heard a lot of anxiety about President Trump. People were shocked at how quickly Trump pivoted away from supporting Ukraine and embraced Putin. I was asked frequently if Trump would go to war with China to defend Taiwan and heard a lot of doubt from Taiwanese officials about Trump’s commitment to our partners in Taiwan. Conversely, when I asked tour guides, students, or businesspeople the same question, I heard more confidence about the U.S. commitment to defend the island. As was the case when I was there in 2022, people in Taiwan feel a lot of affinity for the people of Ukraine—two democracies threatened by large neighboring autocracies. In one government office, I saw a giant Ukrainian flag signed by Ukrainian warriors on the front.

I also heard worries about Trump’s realpolitik approach to international politics. Officials in Taipei believe they have a special bond with the United States because we are both democracies. But Trump does not seem to care much about values. This makes people in Taiwan nervous. Some people I met also expressed concern about Trump’s desire to do a “grand bargain” with Xi Jinping. Several people reminded me that the U.S. had abandoned Taiwan before and expressed fear that another betrayal was coming.

More generally, I was asked to explain several Trump policies that seem to benefit China and weaken the United States, such as picking fights with allies in Europe, closing down Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, or radically scaling back the resources for the United States Agency of International Development, which scholars and government officials worry will benefit Beijing. I had no answers.

Another big impression of this trip was the deepening of political polarization in Taiwan. It seemed worse than three years ago. During a meeting with one member of parliament, he turned on the television so we could watch how empty the parliament was because of boycotts. In meetings with party leaders of the Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People's Party (TPP), I heard laments about recall campaigns against their MPs undertaken by President Lai’s party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), as a way to undermine their majority in parliament. I am not an expert on Taiwanese politics, but that didn’t sound very democratic to me. From DPP leaders, I heard laments about how the KMT continues to underestimate the efforts of infiltration from Beijing’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Just weeks before my visit, President Lai gave a fierce speech about the threat from the CCP. DPP officials I met, of course, praised the speech as long overdue. DPP critics called it unnecessarily provocative. Taiwan’s political polarization seemed a lot like ours, and that’s not a good sign for a place dealing an existential threat from the PRC.

A final impression, though, was how the Taiwanese society seemed to tune out, or at least compartmentalize, their dramas with Beijing and political polarization to just get on with their lives. Taiwan’s economy is a miracle—one of the most prosperous places in the world. I learned at the conference that the island’s GDP per capita now exceeds Japan’s! Taiwan is also rated as one of the happiest societies in the world, with outstanding health care and education. Taiwan handled COVID-19 better than most countries—a fact that many reported to me with pride. At the conference, I also learned about the serious demographic challenges that Taiwan faces, just like Japan and South Korea, and that the cost of living in Taipei, housing especially, is too high for young people. But Taiwan is still thriving. Visit and see for yourselves! I will give you tips on the best restaurants.

Our collective challenge, Americans and Taiwanese alike, is to maintain the status quo. I am deeply disappointed by the disruption President Trump and his team have triggered in our relations with Europe. I hope they will do better in maintaining continuity in Asia, including with Taiwan.