With tensions surrounding the divided strait that lies between mainland China and Taiwan, two top rival figures from the politically contested island set out on separate trips to visit the leading powers locked in the feud.
What Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and former President Ma Ying-jeou do or do not accomplish during their respective visits to the United States and China could have vast implications on the fate of Taiwan and the bitter dispute between the world's two most powerful nations.
Tsai's visit to the U.S., the first leg of which concluded Friday, is her seventh since taking office in 2016 when as head of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) she unseated the traditionally dominant Kuomintang (KMT)'s Ma. But this was her first since regional tensions spiraled over then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi making a visit of her own to Taiwan last August, sparking massive Chinese military exercises.
At the same time, Ma's travel marked the first-ever visit by a sitting or former Taiwanese leader to the People's Republic since its 1949 establishment after a civil war that forced the Nationalist KMT to found a government in exile across the strait. To this day, Beijing claims the island, which has received growing support from Washington despite severing formal ties decades ago.
As an election looms in Taiwan less than a year away, both politicians are seen as bringing with them ulterior motives on their "unofficial" trips.
"Both President Tsai's transit through the U.S. and former President Ma's visit to China reflects their respective desires to pivot to these two world superpowers in an attempt to showcase to their Taiwanese constituents they could secure the favor of decision makers in either Washington or Beijing," Paul Huang, a research fellow at the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation in Taipei, told Newsweek.
But the two are set to face hurdles in conveying this message back home given existing political divisions.
For the Taiwanese president, who resigned as head of the DPP in November after a poor showing in local elections, Huang said she and her party "will brandish Tsai's few meetings with low-ranking U.S. officials or partisan Republican politicians in the U.S. as some major diplomatic breakthrough and 'evidence' that the U.S. will rush to Taiwan's defense."
The researcher pointed to recent polling that demonstrated how the "Taiwanese public's confidence in U.S. military intervention had collapsed in 2022 after witnessing the Russia-Ukraine war and the lack of U.S. military involvement." This came as the "public's skepticism in Tsai government's years-long claims of foreign policy and U.S. relations success already runs high," according to Huang.
Further destabilizing the situation is the fact that the People's Liberation Army of China has "decisively surpassed Taiwan's military in both quantitative and qualitative terms," he said. Meanwhile, he argued that "Taiwan's military and national security apparatus are thoroughly inadequate, institutionally incompetent, and grossly mismanaged and led."
And as for Ma, also not the head of his party, Huang said "Beijing's treatments of him reflect their understanding that Ma is a well-known politician friendly to China but who is not otherwise holding any significant political power or influence to change Taiwan's domestic political balance or policies."
"As such there can be no 'political negotiation' between Beijing and Ma," Huang added, "something that surrogates of the DPP have been accusing Ma of doing which reflects an ignorance of the reality of geopolitics and Beijing's decision-making."
What's clear is that the formalities of both trips have been orchestrated to try to avoid, rather than incite further tensions. The success of this effort, however, will likely rest on how Beijing reacts to a potential meeting between Tsai and current U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy anticipated to take place when she returns next week from a two-stop tour in Central America to visit Los Angeles before making her way back to Taiwan.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Chinese Embassy to the U.S. Charge d'Affaires Xu Xueyuan warned that such interactions "could lead to another serious confrontation in the China-U.S. relationship."
"What the U.S. has done seriously undermines China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and seriously violates the one-China principle," Xu said. "It will send out a wrong signal to the world and will once again have a severe impact on China-U.S. relations."
She said that "the Taiwan question is at the very core of China's core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations."
As was the case for Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August, the first of its kind in a quarter of a century, the White House has downplayed the interaction as routine. National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby told reporters Thursday that "there was no reason" for any major reaction from Beijing "given how commonplace these transits are."
Wen-Ti Sung, a lecturer at Australia National University's Taiwan Studies Program who also serves as a fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Atlantic Council, told Newsweek that "the U.S. seems to be playing 'good cop bad cop' at this moment: the White House is low key about President Tsai's visit, but the U.S. Congress is very welcoming."
He called this a "useful division of labor" for Washington.
"The White House's approach reassures other Western and like-minded allies that the Taiwan issue will not escalate, not while they are already preoccupied with helping Ukraine," Sung said, "while the U.S. Congress' warm reception of Taiwan's President Tsai still injects confidence into the vitality of U.S.-Taiwan relations, but it is not the executive branch, so it maintains both plausible deniability and off-ramp for Beijing to not unduly escalate the military tension across Taiwan Strait."
Sung identified benefits to the Chinese government as well in receiving Ma at this time, which "provides useful political cover for Beijing to soften towards Taiwan without appearing soft."
Cross-strait relations have been trapped in a years-long vicious cycle as nationalism on both sides feeds off one another. With the ruling DPP adopting an increasingly independent outlook for Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping has doubled down on vows for reunification by diplomacy or by force, if necessary, rhetoric that has only emboldened the DPP's talking points among its supporters.
"Which is why Taiwan's ex-President Ma Ying-jeou's historic trip to China at this moment is very useful," Sung said. "Beijing can frame it as Taiwan extending an olive branch first, and Beijing's subsequent moderation towards Taiwan is merely reactive and out of reciprocity."
Sana Hashmi, a fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation in Taipei, argued that, now, Ma is once again attempting "to take forward his political legacy" and "project that the KMT is working towards cross-Strait peace and stability."
"The timing of the visit suggests that for Ma and KMT, elections dominate the agenda," Hashmi, formerly a Taiwan Foreign Ministry fellow at National Chengchi University's Institute of International Affairs and a consultant at the Indian External Affairs Ministry, told Newsweek.
"And they would want this visit to be working to their advantage by influencing people's perception," she added, "even though there is enough pushback."
And just as U.S. President Joe Biden's administration has opted to remain relatively quiet on Tsai's trip, Hashmi said that Xi's reaction may also be "low-key, especially in comparison to the reaction in the aftermath of Pelosi's visit," when the People's Liberation Army surrounded Taiwan with military drills, including live missile launches.
This time around, Hashmi said Chinese officials "will use Ma's visit as a projection of Taiwan's will for the betterment of relations with China" and "it's now a battle of setting narratives suited to their interests."
Narratives also matter for Tsai, whose government is reeling not only from recent electoral setbacks but also from potentially even more damaging diplomatic defeats.
Since Tsai came to power, six countries have cut relations with Taipei in favor of establishing formal ties with Beijing, the most recent being Honduras earlier this week. Neither government today claiming to be the true representative of China allows for diplomatic ties with its rival and the People's Republic has proven overwhelmingly successful in courting new partners with its influential status as the world's second-largest economy despite a rise in unofficial Western support for Taiwan.
While the international community was once largely divided in recognition of either Beijing or Taipei, the number of nations retaining diplomatic relations with Taiwan has since dwindled to just a dozen United Nations member states and the Vatican. Tsai is now traveling to two of them, Guatemala and Belize, between her visits to two major U.S. cities.
"Tsai's transit stops in New York and Los Angeles aim to demonstrate that her administration is capable of strengthening ties with like-minded democracies in the face of China's growing aggression, especially after Honduras severed ties with Taiwan," Jing Bo-jiun, a research fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Sweden and previously a research associate at Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, told Newsweek.
Jing saw "a clear political message" in Ma's visit as well. It's that "the 1992 Consensus—one China, respective interpretations—can still serve as a viable foundation for cross-Strait engagement," even amid "increasing difficulties in persuading voters to support this approach."
Andy Mok, a senior research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing, also spoke to the diverging narratives of Tsai and Ma's trips.
"Tsai's visit to the U.S. can be seen as a face-saving way for the U.S. to avoid another Pelosi-like fiasco from which it is still paying a price in global standing," Mok told Newsweek. "At the same time, Ma's visit to China shows there is strong desire on both sides of the Taiwan Straits for a peaceful solution."
As to whether this could be successful in avoiding the conflict that both Beijing and Washington say they seek to avoid, he argued this depended on the level of external intervention, including from the U.S., in the cross-strait issue.
"As long as the parties to this issue can constructively engage without outside meddling an amicable outcome is likely," Mok said.
The U.S. and China have increasingly accused one another of attempting to change the status quo on the question of Taiwan's sovereignty. The two sides' armed forces have also expanded training geared toward the kind of fight that would take place over the disputed island.
Meanwhile, bilateral relations continue to strain on a number of other issues, such as human rights, trade and the recent shootdown of a high-altitude balloon Washington has alleged was an espionage tool over U.S. territory despite Beijing's claims it was a research airship. Both sides, however, recognize that Taiwan is at the heart of their feud.
The island has previously served as a flashpoint for crises between the U.S. and China, most seriously during the 1950s when Washington considered nuclear action in response to Chinese operations in the Taiwan Strait and Korean Peninsula. And though Beijing has always maintained a military commitment toward retaking Taiwan, Washington's stance has traditionally been one of strategic ambiguity, neither confirming nor denying the willingness to intervene in the event of a conflict, since breaking official ties with Taipei in 1979.
Under Biden, however, this has begun to shift.
The above graphic was provided by Statista.
Following a toughening of U.S. policy toward China under former President Donald Trump, Biden has pledged on at least four occasions to come to Taiwan's aid through direct military force. The president's remarks have drawn outrage in Beijing, which has accused Washington of undermining the fundamental One China Policy—referred to by Chinese officials as the One China Principle—and the Three Joint Communiques developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The White House, for its part, has repeatedly asserted that there has been no change to U.S. policy.
But Chas Freeman, a retired career U.S. diplomat who has served in a number of roles at the Pentagon and State Department, including as director of Chinese affairs when Washington and Beijing first established ties, argued that the U.S. was "now in violation" of decades-long understandings, including not recognizing Taiwan as the site of a state, not deploying troops on Taiwan and not maintaining defense commitment to Taiwan.
"And that is driving mainland policy," Freeman, now a scholar at Brown University's Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs in Rhode Island, told Newsweek, "and it is also driving Tsai Ing-wen's visit because this is an opportunity to consolidate what Taipei sees as a gain."
While Ma's trip sought to capitalize on what Freeman described as a "major reexamination of Taiwan reunification policy" in Beijing led by top Xi adviser Wang Huning, who assumed the chair of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference earlier this month, Freeman said that Tsai's visit was "part of a long-term process that Taipei is undertaking a campaign to try to unravel normalization with Beijing" on the part of Washington.
"When we say well, 'There's precedent for transits, therefore, we can have a transit that isn't really a transit but a visit,' we think well, this has all been done before," Freeman said. "The Chinese reaction is, 'That's not what you agreed.' Our word has been broken in their view."
"That is a major cause on their side of the mistrust that currently characterizes the U.S.-China relationship," he added. "We have our complaints as well, but certainly there is no trust between Beijing and Washington now."
Newsweek reached out to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York via email for comment.