Donald Trump likely blind to China's sensitivity on Taiwan, One China policy

Beijing: In the post-truth Trumpian era of US politics, the president-elect's camp has sought to portray the protocol-breaking telephone call with Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen as a strategic triumph which has achieved what eight years of the Obama administration had failed – to put Beijing off balance.

This much is almost certainly true – the Chinese government has been riled and likely caught by surprise. But to what end? The question is to what extent Trump has formulated a plan before countenancing whether Washington's decades-old adherence to the One China policy could be used as a bargaining chip on issues like trade or the South China Sea.

"There's some merit to the argument this has put [Beijing] off balance," says Rory Medcalf, head of the Australian National University's National Security College. "Was it a calculated strategy to do so? If that's the case what are the other elements of the strategy and has Trump or Trump advisers gamed out what comes next? I doubt it."

The principle of "One China" strikes at the very heart of Beijing's "core interests" and what it considers as the "bedrock" of US-China relations, and a non-negotiable prerequisite for all countries maintaining diplomatic ties with the People's Republic.

President-elect Donald Trump.Credit: AP

It is the product of a protracted civil war between Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang, or Nationalists, and Mao Zedong's Communist Party which ultimately saw the KMT retreat in defeat to Taiwan in 1949. Subsequent Taiwanese governments have never relinquished its claim as the rightful government for all of China.

Beijing views Taiwan as another province under its sovereignty and has not ruled out reclaiming the island by military force, especially should it declare independence.

Chinese leaders see an eventual reunification with Taiwan as something approaching a sacred holy grail. For now, its One China mantra dictates that "there is only one China in the world; the mainland and Taiwan both belong to one China; and China's sovereignty and territorial integrity are indivisible."

In normalising relations with the PRC, the US severed official diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1979 and recognised Beijing as the sole legal government of China. (Australia did so in 1972.)

Chinese President Xi Jinping, in the Politburo. China sees Taiwan as a province, not a separate nation. Credit: AP

Richard Rigby, the director of the Australian National University's China Institute and a former assistant director of the Office of National Assessments, says there has been little evidence the Trump camp appreciated the complexity of the One China policy and how it had allowed Taiwan to develop and flourish as a democracy and economic power.

"It's the very foundation of the entire US-China relationship since Nixon and Kissinger and for people who live in a rational world as the Chinese do, it will be very hard for them to conceive this fundamental underpinning could be questioned in such cavalier and unexpected fashion," he said.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen speaking to naval officers.Credit: New York Times

Having previously welcomed Trump as a potentially more palatable option than Hillary Clinton, widely seen as being tougher on China than Barack Obama, China's state-controlled has markedly changed its tone.

The nationalistic tabloid Global Times labelled Trump "naïve" and "like a child" said his "provocations", if they continued, would see Beijing "offer support, even military assistance to US foes", which ostensibly could include North Korea and Iran.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen.Credit: Getty Images

The New York Times drew up a laundry list of other potential retaliatory measures Beijing could resort to, from targeting US enterprises seeking to do business in China, to pursuing the remaining 22 predominantly smaller nations who still maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

The Trump effect could also see allies like Australia reassess their ties with Washington. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has already reaffirmed Australia's adherence of the One China policy, while Foreign Minister Julie Bishop on Tuesday acknowledged the Trump election win and Brexit as factors shaping the government's thinking as it launched the consultative process for the country's first foreign policy white paper since 2003.

"More than ever we'd be forced back to look really hard again at what are the most fundamental underpinnings of what we do, how we make our way in the world," Rigby says. "Obviously the US has had an important role to play there but how that role is going to work out under Trump we don't know so certainly we'll need fallback positions.

"It is important that we do consult and share views as much as possible with the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Indonesians, the Singaporeans … and I think we have to be prepared for more surprises."