“This visit is a recognition of the deep friendship and partnership of the United States and Taiwan over high security, economy, health care and democratic open transparent values,” Azar said Monday in Taipei, the capital.
Beijing has reduced the pressure on Taiwan, but that is just one area in which it increasingly values assertive foreign policy and the associated push-back of Washington diplomacy on both sides.
Washington pulled off Beijing last month when it parted ways with years of ambiguity by explicitly rejecting most of China’s maritime claims in the strategically vital South China Sea. China says it owns the waterway and that activity in the area by the U.S. Navy, including sailing ships near Chinese-controlled islands, threatens regional peace and stability.
Other disputes center on economic and human rights issues.
A two-year-old tariff war has intensified U.S. actions targeting Chinese institutions and officials. Washington has launched a campaign to exclude Chinese telecom giant Huawei from the US and its allies, a pressure that China sees as a mere pretext to curb its development as a global technology powerhouse.
The US says Huawei is looking at China’s ruling Communist Party and threatens to compromise personal data and the integrity of the information systems in the companies in which it operates. China says there is no evidence for that.
President Donald Trump began the confrontation of the technology last week with an executive order linking up with the Chinese owners of consumer apps TikTok and WeChat, possibly leading to their words not being available in the lucrative American market.
The US has sanctioned Chinese companies and officials over the alleged persecution of Muslims in the northwestern region of Xinjiang and has now turned its eyes to stricter Chinese control in Hong Kong.
As Azar prepared for a meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Monday, Hong Kong police arrested newspaper publisher and leading opposition figure Jimmy Lai as part of a shrinking vote calling for Beijing’s policies in the direction of the former British colony, now a semi-autonomous Chinese city.
Washington has moved to take back trade and other privileges granted to Hong Kong in response to China’s imposition of a sweeping national security law, seen as an attack on acquittal and political activism. China has blamed such actions as a breach of its domestic political affairs and Beijing-backed officials sanctioned by Washington, including city leader Carrie Lam, appeared over the weekend to laugh at the fines.
Complaints about human rights have long been a source of tension between the parties, and Trump has added to them with repeated accusations that China covered the first outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
Accumulated allegations against Beijing have prompted observers to say that Trump hopes that distrust in China will boost his chances of new elections in November. Democratic rival Joseph Biden has substantial experience of foreign policy and has spent time with China’s leader Xi Jinping, but expects underlying differences between the parties to continue, regardless of who wins the election.
Beijing has protested Azar’s attempt as a betrayal of US obligations not to have official contact with the island. Azar’s visit was facilitated by the 2018 passage of the Taiwan Travel Act, which encouraged Washington to send senior officials to Taiwan after decades in which such contacts were rare.
“I would like to reiterate that the issue of Taiwan is the most important and sensitive issue in relations between China and the US,” Foreign Minister Zhao Lijian said on Monday. “What the US has done seriously has undermined its commitment to the Taiwan issue.”
Warmer US relations with democratic Taiwan are largely a result of strong bipartisan support in Congress, but also seem to show how the Trump administration is prepared to face Beijing’s threats and an alternative to authoritarian Chinese Communist Party to promote.
