by The collection of American memorabilia, vast and well-lit in a busy City Hall area of Tainan City, southern Taiwan, reflected decades of enthusiastic courtship. The maps highlighted sister cities in Ohio and Arizona.
There was a baseball celebration, with an American flag placed on a table. And in the middle of it all, a card sent to the United States that seemed to reveal the thoughts of Tainan, a metropolis of 1.8 million inhabitants, and almost all of Taiwan.
“Together, stronger,” he said. “Solidarity conquers everything.”
The message was ambitious: a graphic illustration of deep insecurity. Taiwan is a not entirely democratic nation of 23 million people, threatened by a greedy China, whose future depends on how the United States responds to the final request: fight the world’s other superpower if it attacks and endangers the self-government of the island.
Now more than ever, the tense psychology of that situation is showing signs of wear and tear. With China asserting its claim to the island more forcefully and the United States increasingly divided As to how active it should be in global affairs, Taiwan is a collection of contradictions and doubts, less about the plans of its own government or even those of Beijing than about Washington’s intentions.
Vice President Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party won Taiwan’s presidential election this month in part because he seemed the candidate most likely to keep the United States around.
Pre-election polls showed that most people in Taiwan want stronger relations despite the risk of provoking China. They support the recent increase in arms sales from the United States. They believe President Biden is committed to defending the island, but they worry that that will not be enough.
As they watch Washington’s stalemate over military aid to Ukraine and Israel, and try to imagine what the United States would actually do for Taiwan in a crisis, faith in the United States plummets. The same Taiwanese survey Respondents who showed support for the American approach found that only 34 percent of respondents viewed the United States as a trustworthy country, down from 45 percent in 2021.
Recent studies of online debates show a similar trend: a growing concern that the world’s oldest democracy lacks the strength or interest to really help. In interviews, voters described feeling like passengers. Many see the United States as an unpredictable driver who could get them to safety but who could also abandon the wheel.
And on a small island about 100 miles from China that has a defense budget only a fraction of Beijing’s, those doubts about the United States can have their own dangerous impact.
Taiwanese and American analysts are unsure what could inspire a widespread lack of faith in the United States; for some, perhaps a commitment to do more in self-defense. But for others, it contributes to a lack of urgency. If survival depends on the Americans, and who knows if they will ever come, it is argued, what’s the point?
The risk for Taiwan (and for those who see it as a first line of defense that, if lost to Beijing, would give China greater power to dominate Asia) is that distrust of the United States could make it easier for the island to be taken over. .
“It’s really important that they believe that the United States is going to intervene on their behalf because there are a lot of studies that show that can influence their resistance,” said Oriana Skylar Mastro, an international studies fellow at Stanford University and Stanford University. American Business Institute. “And we would need them to hold on long enough for us to get there.”
An abandonment complex
The origins of Taiwan’s distrust can be glimpsed in a row of moldy houses in the mountains above the skyscrapers of Taipei, the island’s vibrant capital. Beginning in 1950, American soldiers occupied these bungalows, with their mottled floors and large yards.
The presence of the troops seemed permanent. There was about 9,000 American soldiers in Taiwan in 1971, when a treaty ensured that the United States would defend Taiwan against any attacker. Then, quickly, they disappeared.
When the United States established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1979, following President Richard M. Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972, it accelerated the departure of American personnel. Neighbors recalled friends disappearing with toys and kitchen utensils that had rusted.
Eva Wang worked as a legal advisor for the U.S. military in the 1960s. She said she cried the day in 1979 when U.S. officials lowered the American flag for the last time, learning a powerful lesson: “Our destiny was beyond our control.”
Her husband, Wayne Chen, a retired prosecutor, concluded (as did many others) that the Americans could not be trusted.
“If a war really breaks out and the CCP comes,” he said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party, “then, of course, the U.S. military will not defend us.”
Researchers in Taiwan have found that 1979 continues to shape the opinions of Taiwanese. Even for those who were not alive at the time, the American change hurts, like a father’s adulterous affair, endlessly discussed.
“If you look at the skepticism generated in Taiwan today, it’s mainly about the United States leaving Taiwan,” said Jasmine Lee, editor of Observation between the United States and Taiwana group of experts who recently contributed to a report about doubts about the United States. “It’s reasonable because we’ve been abandoned before.”
Nixonian history is still embedded in relationships. After 1979, the United States developed a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” refusing to openly commit to defending Taiwan, which China considers a lost territory. That means everything the United States does is closely watched through a lens of past and potential betrayal.
The disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021; the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Washington’s decision not to send troops; Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022, which prompted a strong Chinese military response; The news events have had a strong effect on Taiwanese public opinion of the United States, according to polls and discussions in Chinese-language media and online platforms.
Stanford’s Dr. Mastro said that in some cases, “Taiwan’s views on reliability don’t make sense.” While polls in Taiwan showed growing doubts that the United States did not do more to help Ukraine, he said, the reality is that the United States held back in part “so that we could be prepared to defend Taiwan.”
But abandonment has not been the only concern. Data scientists at a Taiwanese think tank identified 84 distinct narratives of skepticism toward the United States in online discourse between 2021 and 2023. Some people argued that the United States was too weak to defend distant Taiwan, or that it was a destructive force. , a creator. of chaos. Others declared the United States undemocratic and a “false friend.”
Chinese commentators often tried to amplify criticism, and the “false friend” phrase came from the mainland, researchers said, but almost everything else arose from Taiwanese anxiety.
Hsin-Hsin Pan, an associate professor of sociology at Taipei’s Soochow University who studies Taiwanese public opinion, said insecurity and frustration over a lack of influence over their own destiny had become an even bigger part of Taiwanese identity. Taiwan.
Taiwan finds itself at an uneven crossroads in US-China relations. It stands in the shadow of an increasingly authoritarian giant that sees Taiwan as a haughty, separatist appendage that must be returned, by force if necessary. And it’s thousands of miles from the United States, where polls since 2021 have shown that a plurality of Americans oppose sending troops to the defense of Taiwan. In a recent survey53 percent of Republicans said the United States should stay out of global affairs.
“There is no anti-Americanism here,” Dr. Pan said. “But there is substantial skepticism.”
Looking for stability
Some of Taiwan’s most vocal American skeptics have learned not only from history but also from personal experience. They were graduate students in New York during the Covid-19 pandemic, disillusioned by the chaotic response and anti-Asian bias. Others are engineers with Silicon Valley connections who worry that Taiwan’s microchip industry, which makes 90 percent of the world’s most advanced semiconductors, will be weakened by pressure to manufacture in the United States, stealing the jewel that makes the world want to keep the island out. from Chinese hands.
They are also immigrants like Amy Chou, 67, the owner of a no-nonsense restaurant in San Francisco who returned to Taiwan this month to vote. Like many others, she said she thought the United States would help Taiwan in a war, but she was unsure and did not trust the United States to think of anything other than her own economic interests.
“The Americans just want us to buy more weapons,” he said at a political rally in Tainan. “They want our money and our chips. “
“If Trump wins,” he added, fearing the effect of another four years of an “America First” foreign policy, “it will be worse.”
Taiwanese politicians are hesitant to discuss such concerns, including Lai, the former mayor of Tainan, the city that holds the pro-U.S. sanctuary. But in a sign of his priorities, he addressed the international media before thanking his fans after his victory last Saturday night. For a leader vilified by Beijing for having called himself a “pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence,” that seemed to suggest that he believed nothing mattered more to Taiwan than external support.
It’s not that he or other officials are just pushing for help. Taiwan’s 2024 budget included a jump in military spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product, or $19 billion. But their leaders have been slow to change towards drones, missiles and other asymmetric weapons that, according to analysts, would be necessary to stop a Chinese amphibious invasion.
There is even less urgency in Taiwanese society. Volunteer enlistments in the Taiwanese military have been decreasing from 2021. Deferrals from mandatory service are common and civil defense training at the community level, although improving, remains rare.
American officials and analysts often lament the inaction. They have shown less interest in doubts about the United States. Laura Rosenberger, president of the American Institute in Taiwan, the US embassy in all but name, simply praised Taiwan’s “robust democracy” when she was asked at a news conference about the growing skepticism.
But instead of flattery, many on the island yearn for a candid analysis of the past, America’s struggles in the present and a shift from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity. Some argue that putting US troops or equipment in Taiwan; exchange intelligence, develop and publish shared plans; commit long-term to protect an island that can be both a pawn and where the US-led global order wins or loses.
“There needs to be a commitment to explain why Taiwan is important to US national interests,” Dr. Pan said.
And he added: “We need to know that there is stability in power.”
Juan Liu and Christopher Buckley contributed reporting from Taipei, Taiwan.
