'Allies Act' for Taiwan damages bilateral ties

According to Democratic Congressman David Cicilline, who initiated the bill, the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative (TAIPEI) Act of 2019 does three things: It endorses a US-Taiwan free trade agreement, supports Taiwan's membership in international institutions and helps Taiwan maintain partners and allies.

But that obscures the bill's true intent and its disruptive potential for China-US relations.

By obligating the US government to seek to bolster Taiwan's representation on the international stage, encouraging other countries' official engagement with Taipei and punishing those who do the opposite, the Act is a provocative and dangerous move to challenge Beijing's bottom line by sabotaging the peaceful reunification of the island with the Chinese mainland.

Unlike the tensions surrounding trade, or the ongoing novel coronavirus epidemic, where the disputes between Washington and Beijing aren't expected to keep them from engaging with each other, Washington's increasing use of Taiwan as a pawn in its game may not only create further troubles in cross-Straits ties, but also derail the overall China-US relationship for good.

Since Washington issued its latest National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, which designated China as a strategic rival, Beijing has perceived an ever stronger motivation on Washington's part to use the island as a tool in its attempts to obstruct the rejuvenation of the country. The Act, together with previous bills on Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet, just reinforced that perception.

US lawmakers cited the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to justify the new bill. But that is in sharp contradiction to Beijing's reading of US commitments. Any deviation from what previous US administrations have established and observed over the decades is to Beijing a violation of US commitments as well as Chinese sovereign rights.

Helping Taipei preserve "diplomatic" partners, of which it has merely 15 left after eight countries shifted recognition in favor of Beijing since Tsai Ing-wen's first term of office as Taiwan leader, certainly contradicts the US commitment to one China.

Beijing has urged Washington to take "concrete measures to prevent the Act from becoming law". Judging from its bipartisan approval in Congress, that seems unlikely to happen.

But instead of supporting the notion that the island is an "independent country" and pushing back against the mainland's "increasing pressure" on it as Tsai has claimed, by abetting the efforts of her administration to expand the so-called international space for the island's de facto independence, the Act simply shows that the secessionists on the island are content to be puppets on a stage created for them by Washington, which is dexterously pulling their strings.