Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) met with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in Thailand last weekend in talks described as “candid” and “fruitful.” Taiwan was one of the focuses of the meeting, along with the Iran-backed Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, sparking speculation that the US might use Taiwan as a bargaining chip in return for China’s assistance in the Middle East. Beijing is Tehran’s largest trading partner.

Rest assured, no sitting US president in the current geopolitical climate could make concessions on Taiwan, especially with a US presidential election fast approaching. As Evan Medeiros, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues said recently, Taiwan has become “a democratized issue” in the US “which everyone wants to talk about.”

Tomorrow, the 11th Legislative Yuan is to elect its speaker. This decision will have important ramifications for Taiwan’s efforts to expand its international space, as parliamentary diplomacy has been a critical tool for Taipei to circumvent its diplomatic isolation. Europe continues to closely observe the lead-up to the consequential vote.

The pertinence of parliamentary diplomacy for Taiwan becomes clear in the context of Taiwan’s recent openness in relations with Europe.

Out of all EU institutions, the European Parliament, with its directly elected lawmakers across the 27 member states, has been at the forefront of efforts to elevate the perception of Taiwan to that of a like-minded partner in its own right rather than a festering sore in EU-China relations.