U.S. cannot afford to lose Taiwan to China: Scholar

Taipei, March 6 (CNA) A Taiwanese scholar said Thursday that Taiwan is a key asset in the United States' ongoing "strategic competition" with China, and one that it cannot afford to lose.

Despite U.S. President Donald Trump's repeated refusal to openly commit to Taiwan's defense in the event of a Chinese invasion, the U.S. Congress has maintained its decades-long bipartisan support for Taiwan, Lin Wen-cheng (林文程), a professor at National Sun Yat-sen University's Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies, said at a seminar in Taipei.

Taiwan's strategic importance to the U.S. in the second island chain, coupled with its global dominance in the semiconductor industry, means Washington cannot afford to lose Taiwan to China if it wants to prevail in the U.S.-Sino competition, Lin said.

That structural bilateral "strategic competition" and confrontation will continue for decades to come, he said at the seminar on Taiwan-U.S.-China trilateral relations in 2025.

Meanwhile, Professor Wang Hung-jen (王宏仁) at National Cheng Kung University's Department of Political Science, warned that Trump's reluctance to commit Taiwan's defense and his change of stance on Ukraine could send the wrong message to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), potentially resulting in an increase in Beijing's pressure on Taipei.

The current approach by the U.S. could lead to Xi making hasty decisions and aggressive moves, including military action against Taiwan, Wang said at the seminar.

On Feb. 25, Trump again refused to make clear his stance on protecting Taiwan from a takeover by China, when asked by a reporter during a Cabinet meeting whether it was his policy that China would never take Taiwan by force while he is president.

"I never comment on that," he said. "I don't comment on it because I don't want to ever put myself in that position."

Trump also reiterated that he has a "great relationship" with Xi and said that Washington welcomes good relations with Beijing.

Before Trump was inaugurated, he said in an interview on NBC last December that he would "never say" if the U.S. was committed to defending Taiwan against China.

Trump's stance on the cross-strait issue is a departure from that of his predecessor Joe Biden, who had said unequivocally on several occasions that he would commit U.S. troops in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

Over the past few decades, the U.S. has maintained a stance characterized as "strategic ambiguity," which means not showing its hand on how it would respond in the event of a cross-strait conflict.

After Biden took office as president in January 2021, however, he repeatedly used language that appeared to diverge from that longstanding ambiguity, saying directly that the U.S. would come to Taiwan's defense in the event of a war.

On each of those occasions, administration officials later walked back Biden's comments to some extent, signaling that the U.S.' policy on Taiwan had not changed.