Why Washington Wants Americans to Care About Taiwan

Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13 was closely observed far beyond its borders for one particular reason: The outcome could have triggered a belligerent response from China, which may have led to dangerous new tensions between Washington and Beijing. But that didn’t happen. The winner, the Democratic Progressive Party’s Lai Ching-te, was not Beijing’s preferred candidate, given his reputation in China as a separatist. Yet Beijing responded to Lai’s victory in a relatively muted fashion. Lai, in turn, has continued to signal that he doesn’t want to escalate tensions with his country’s bigger neighbor.

How is Washington viewing these developments in Taipei and Beijing? What impact will Taiwan’s election have on the U.S.-China relationship? I spoke with Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democratic congressman who serves as the ranking member of the influential House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Subscribers can watch the full interview in the video box atop this page. What follows is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: Let’s begin with the election results in Taiwan. What are your takeaways?

Raja Krishnamoorthi: There’s a consensus in Taiwan that they enjoy their autonomy. They don’t want to move toward independence, and at the same time, they’re not going to capitulate to aggression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). A lot of the decision-making by individual voters relied on domestic politics. All three of the presidential candidates agreed on some of the major tenets with regard to policy toward China and the United States, and in that regard, we would have been pleased if any of them were elected.

RA: Lai Ching-te is the first candidate to win Taiwan’s presidency without a majority share of the vote in 24 years. Does that worry you?

RK: No, I think that he will work effectively with his counterparts in the Taiwan’s People Party (TPP) as well as the Kuomintang party (KMT). In the legislative Yuan, a majority of the seats lie with the KMT and TPP, and it’ll be interesting to see how those eight swing votes controlled by the TPP lead to interesting coalitions on different domestic issues. But I’m not concerned about his not having a majority of the Yuan.

RA: So far, China has not launched any massive military exercises around Taiwan as it has during past times of tension. Why do you think that’s the case?

RK: I think it’s because of their economic problems at home. They perhaps feel that any kind of further military aggression would probably make investors inside and outside of China more nervous. They’re trying to calm jittery nerves. I also think that their massive disinformation campaign in the lead-up to the elections, and their repeated attempts to interfere in those elections, may have backfired in that Lai was elected—and he was far from their favored candidate.

RA: Is it your sense that Beijing didn’t try hard enough to launch cyberattacks on Taiwan, or was Taipei just that much better prepared?

RK: More of the latter. Beijing launched massive disinformation campaigns online. We had a hearing about a month and a half ago, called “Discourse Warfare,” where we featured testimony as well as other evidence of China’s social media campaigns to discourage the Taiwanese people from voting for Lai. They went all-in on trying to interfere in the elections, and it backfired. It didn’t go the way that they expected or hoped.

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RA: Are there lessons from Taiwan’s experience for other countries that will head to the polls in 2024, including the United States?

RJ: My own election is this year, so it’s top of mind for me. One of the lessons I took away from what happened in Taiwan is that we have to be vigilant about the threat from the CCP. And secondly, there has to be a continued effort, just as there was in 2020 on the part of Big Tech and the social media platforms to remove false content and content blatantly commissioned by adversarial regimes or actors that seek to disrupt or sow chaos in our elections.

RA: A few months ago, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which you help run, published 10 policy recommendations to preserve peace in the Taiwan Strait. Before we get into that, why exactly does Taiwan matter so much to the United States?

RK: This is perhaps one of those issues that is deeply tied to Americans’ underlying fear of conflict with China. In a recent poll, some 80 percent of Americans thought that an open conflict with China is possible within the next 5 to 10 years. That cut across all parties, including independent voters.

I think one of the reasons they fear that conflict is a worry that China might attack Taiwan, and the reason for our emphasis on Taiwan is to prevent or deter conflict, whether it’s a hot, open war, or even a cold war of any kind.

RA: Continuing with your policy recommendations, it says that “the U.S. defense manufacturing base is not postured to quickly produce” the “long-range missiles and unmanned vehicles” that a crisis in the Indo-Pacific region would demand. Why is that not changing?

RK: In Washington, short-term thinking is unfortunately the norm, and our appropriations calendar reflects that in the sense that we’re only able to appropriate for one year at a time.

There are two issues. Sometimes we create new weapons platforms each year, but then don’t create the mechanisms or long-term vehicles to supply the armaments or bullets for those proverbial guns. You have new guns and oftentimes not enough bullets. That’s a big problem, especially in a situation like Ukraine, where we’re running out of artillery—for instance, the 155 mm artillery shells.

The second issue is we need to think hard about the types of long-range platforms that we are going to need in multiple theaters. We need to strategically think about that before we start to authorize money for the latest and greatest weapons platform, not knowing when it will be ready or whether it would be required for the types of conflicts that we see.

RA: If I were Taiwanese, this doesn’t really inspire confidence. It sounds like they can’t rely on America.

RK: You’re not confident in Congress, Ravi? I don’t know what you’re talking about!

[laughter]

But it turns out the Taiwanese aren’t confident either. Foreign Policy recently featured a poll showing that more than 60 percent of Taiwanese are not confident in us coming to their aid in the case of a conflict.

RA: OK, so what can the United States do to fix this? How do you move the needle on this if faith in Congress to do more and come to Taiwan’s aid is as low as you’re describing?

RK: We have to authorize this supplemental package of aid for Ukraine, but also Israel, the Indo-Pacific, and other priorities as well. That’s the short-term priority that will help to assuage concerns in Taiwan and elsewhere. But longer term, I think we have to continue to form a consensus among Republicans and Democrats with regard to the CCP. That’s partly the job of the Select Committee on the CCP—to explain to the American people, to our colleagues, to others, why it is so important to deter conflict with China by equipping Taiwan with what it needs to discourage conflict.

RA: The United States is quite involved in wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine. That must have a pretty big impact on how Washington thinks about any other potential conflicts. Is Washington equipped to deal with so much all at once?

RK: We have to be equipped, Ravi. Our partnerships and alliances are extremely important. Whether it’s our treaty partnerships with Japan and Korea or our other arrangements, such as with the Quad involving India and Japan and Australia, these types of arrangements are ones that can help us to deal with some of those pressing materiel requirements that you talked about but also are very important for deterrence.

This is something that the CCP is deeply concerned about in its military planning. It deters the type of conflict that the American people don’t want in the Indo-Pacific region. And that’s why I think we have to strengthen them.

RA: Late last year, the select committee on China released a 150-point plan to reset America’s economic relationship with China. If you had to list your top three points, what would those be?

RK: All of them have to do with investing in America. First, fixing our high-skilled immigration system, which is driving away the very talent that we need to win the economic competition with China.

Second, investing in basic research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and other places in technologies of the future, where unless we invest in basic artificial intelligence research or basic biotech research in semiconductor, nanoscale computing, and so forth, we’re not going to be able to maintain our innovation for the future. This is something that is deeply needed.

Third, fixing some of our supply chain issues, especially with regard to critical minerals, where we are heavily reliant on CCP-guided processing of critical minerals for the electric vehicle supply chain, but also the semiconductor supply chain and others. If we don’t fix those things, we’re going to continue to be reliant and subject to potential economic coercion by the CCP.

RA: We’ve been discussing Taiwan’s elections. I have to ask you about the U.S. elections. What is your sense of the challenges that might confront the select China select committee if former President Donald Trump comes back to power?

RK: With regard to China and the CCP, there appears to be a durable consensus on at least one thing, which is that the status quo is unacceptable. We have a pretty robust debate and dialogue within the committee from different people, from different parts of the ideological spectrum, including people who are Trump supporters. That will continue regardless of whether Donald Trump is elected.