Washington’s first direct military aid to Taiwan took a key step in the US Congress on Wednesday, September 14, with this vote likely to provoke the ire of Beijing.
“This is the most significant overhaul of US policy toward Taiwan” since 1979, when Washington recognized China while agreeing to maintain the self-defense capacity of the island, assure senators Bob Menendez (Democrat, New Jersey) and Lindsey Graham (Republican, South Carolina), at the head of this initiative.
Their bill, passed by the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, provides for direct military aid to Taiwan of nearly 4.5 billion dollars (4.5 billion euros) over the next four years. It also demands that US President Joe Biden impose sanctions on major Chinese financial institutions in response to any “escalation in hostile acts towards Taiwan”.
Significant reconciliation
The “Taiwan Policy Act of 2022”, as it is called, also provides for granting the island the status of“major non-NATO ally”.
This vote in committee is only the first step in a long legislative process: the text must now be adopted in plenary session in the Senate, then in the House of Representatives, before being promulgated by Joe Biden. But it still marks a significant rapprochement between the United States and Taiwan, at a time when relations between Beijing and Washington are at their lowest in decades.
The White House is therefore navigating this file with great caution. “We will continue to communicate directly with Congress on this text”, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said evasively on Wednesday. Before assuring that the Biden administration “would continue to deepen its partnership with Taiwan with strong diplomatic, economic and military support”.
Sale of arms and visit of Pelosi
The vote in Congress comes just days after Washington sold $1.1 billion in weapons to Taiwan, and just over a month after a visit to the island by the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives. Nancy Pelosi, who had infuriated Beijing. China had then launched the most important military maneuvers in its history around the island.
Before the visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, number three in the United States and the highest American official to visit the island in decades, Joe Biden’s entourage had already quietly argued to China that the speaker of the House did not represent administration policy, Congress being a separate branch of government.
China considers Taiwan, with a population of around 23 million, to be one of its provinces, which it has yet to successfully reunify with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War ( 1949). In seven decades, the communist army has never been able to conquer the island, which has remained under the control of the Republic of China – the regime that once ruled mainland China and now only rules Taiwan.