Scholarly Handling Cross-Strait Relations : Tsai Presidency

In the early days of December 2016, Tsai Ing-wen, the new DPP President of Taiwan had taken office for seven months and already hit surprisingly low in Taiwan national surveys. But that day, she just surprised everyone.

Taiwanese woke up on Saturday 3^rd December and could read a Tweet that new US President-elect Donald Trump just wrote: ‘The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency. Thank you!’

Donald Trump declaration on Twitter had just signed a huge precedent in cross-strait relations. Indeed, since 1979, there was no direct talk between any Taiwan and United States Presidents, accordingly to the One China policy that has been endorsed on the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean since the shift in recognition from the Republic of China to the People’s Republic of China the same year.

Moreover, what is even more spectacular is that Donald Trump has designated Tsai Ing-wen as the ‘President of Taiwan’, giving her and the island an unexpected upsurge of legitimacy. By calling Tsai Ing-wen the President of Taiwan, new US President-elect broke with decades of US ambiguity toward Taiwan and he explicitly recognized, although informally, the existence of a sovereign state in Taiwan. Although he previously promised that he would get rid of Asian “freeloaders”, such declaration stands for a firm renewal of support to Taiwan…