South Korea hosts the third-largest number of American troops outside the U.S.—after Japan and Germany—stationed there to help defend Seoul against threats from nuclear-armed North Korea and support regional efforts to counter an increasingly assertive China.

JOHN CULVER is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings. He served for 35 years as a Central Intelligence Agency officer, including as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia from 2015 to 2018.

After island’s shock at Trump’s 32 per cent tariff move, leader commits to ‘never sacrificing any single sector’ in talks with US.

After President William Lai (賴清德) took office, he began promoting a foreign policy direction of leveraging a prosperous Taiwan to strengthen our international standing and diplomatic relations. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has carried out a strategy of integrated diplomacy centered on the vision of values-based diplomacy and making Taiwan a global economic powerhouse.

Taiwan has long been a tense flashpoint between Washington and Beijing. By law, the U.S. is required to help Taiwan defend itself. But there is now a debate about whether Taiwan is spending enough on defense,

The term "Taiwan, China" may be interpreted as "implicitly recognizing Taiwan as part of the People's Republic of China (PRC)," which "stands in stark contrast" to the position of the US government, the two members of Congress wrote in the letter.

In another provocative move aimed at undermining China's sovereignty and regional stability, US House of Representatives members on Thursday local time proposed a bipartisan bill to codify the so-called "Six Assurances" to Taiwan.

China has no right to decide whether or not Taiwan is a country given it chooses its own government, Taiwan's Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said on Wednesday, adding that he would be happy to shake the hand of his Chinese opposite number.