Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

US Secretary of Defense James Mattis visited Beijing for the first time from Tuesday to Thursday last week. Tensions between the US and China have been rising and there are many thorny issues between them.

Mattis had meetings with senior Chinese defense officials, as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), during which he expressed the US’ stance and listened to China’s position.

Since then-US president Richard Nixon traveled to China and began Washington’s abandonment of official diplomatic and military relations with Taiwan, several shorthand policy phrases have defined the fraught Taiwan-US-China relationship.

The three main notions are: “one China,” cross-strait stability or the “status quo,” and strategic ambiguity.