Today, January 9, 2021, outgoing US Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo fired his perhaps final diplomatic salvo at Beijing by liberalizing the US-Taiwan relationship much further than expected. This is the first and most hard-hitting paragraph of Pompeo’s press statement:

Taiwan is a vibrant democracy and reliable partner of the United States, and yet for several decades the State Department has created complex internal restrictions to regulate our diplomats, servicemembers, and other officials’ interactions with their Taiwanese counterparts. The United States government took these actions unilaterally, in an attempt to appease the Communist regime in Beijing. No more.

With a stroke of pen, the statehood of Taiwan has become a welcoming fact to the United States, as seemingly implied by Pompeo. It is noticeable and notable that Pompeo has just attended a transition meeting with the incoming Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. So far, I haven’t heard about any official response from Blinken. One might wonder aloud how Joe Biden will deal with this freshly baked hot potato, thanks to Donald Trump’s hawkish state secretary.

Here is my take: the incoming Biden administration has tacitly agreed to let Pompeo irritate Beijing. It is designed to remind Beijing that the good old days of the US-China friendship are over. In the shadow of the ongoing pandemic, there is a whole new game in town. Even dovish Biden can no longer afford to be dovish. Short of war, war games will be part and parcel of the Taiwan Strait scenario going forward. If that will keep you on your toes, well, you better live with it.

--- Lingyang Jiang