Written by Meng Kit Tang.
Image credit: The White House/ Facebook.
The Great Hall of the People was arranged for equilibrium. American and Chinese flags stood in symmetry as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping resumed a relationship both governments had spent months trying to stabilise. This was the first summit of Trump’s second term, held in Beijing at China’s preference. The atmosphere was neither warm nor confrontational. Each side came looking for terms it could live with.
Trump returned home with visible deliverables. China committed to purchasing 200 Boeing aircraft and expanding agricultural imports, while Xi agreed to visit Washington in September. Both governments announced a three-year “strategic stability” framework intended to prevent commercial rivalry and military competition from escalating during Trump’s remaining term.
Xi’s gains were quieter. Beijing secured a predictable bilateral structure while easing tariff pressure without formal political concessions. Several adjustments were implied rather than written, which suited Beijing well.
Both sides described the summit as productive, diplomatic shorthand for each obtaining what it had privately prioritised before the cameras arrived.
The Silence at the Summit
The White House readout omitted Taiwan entirely. Xi mentioned it briefly, as doctrine rather than subject for negotiation: it remained China’s internal affair. No public rebuttal came from the American side. Trump moved past the topic, focusing instead on tariffs and investment. The omission felt natural and, therefore, revealing. There was no visible effort to reassure Taipei, nor any sign that Beijing needed to press Washington into silence.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio later described American policy toward Taiwan as “unchanged.” Coming from a longtime China hawk, the phrase carried weight. Yet continuity can conceal alteration as effectively as it preserves it.
The $14 billion arms package, frozen since March, remained unresolved when Trump departed Beijing. It was neither cancelled nor advanced. It simply remained suspended at the conclusion of a summit intended to define the next phase of U.S.-China relations. Trump had already told reporters before departure that he would discuss arms sales with Xi, a statement analysts noted may have violated the 1982 Six Assurances, as it commits the U.S. not to consult Beijing on any weapons sales to Taipei.
Taiwan was not bargained away in Beijing. It was treated as peripheral to the larger task of stabilising a bilateral relationship both governments considered more urgent.
Beijing had little need for Washington to endorse its position. It only required Washington to regard the subject as inconvenient to raise. As Sun Tzu observed, “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence.” (不战而屈人之兵，善之善者也)
The Table Before the Summit
Six weeks before the Trump summit, Beijing had already begun shaping the diplomatic terrain. After the Iran war delayed Trump’s visit, Chinese officials accelerated the April meeting with Kuomintang (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun. The sequencing mattered. Beijing wanted its framing established before the American delegation arrived. By May, it aimed to present Taiwan not as a target of coercion, but as a domestic issue complicated primarily by the Democratic Progressive Party.
Inside the Great Hall, Cheng opposed Taiwan independence and invoked the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” language closely aligned with official CCP discourse. The significance lay less in agreement than in presentation. Beijing could now point to Taiwan’s largest opposition party and argue that its position reflected a legitimate strand of Taiwanese politics.
The message operated across multiple audiences. Washington was shown that Beijing’s framing had domestic Taiwanese resonance. Taiwanese voters were offered the logic of accommodation. International observers were encouraged to attribute cross-Strait tension to Taipei rather than Beijing.
At the same time, the PLA conducted live-fire drills in the Yellow Sea and maintained an elevated naval presence around Taiwan. Diplomatic signalling and military pressure advanced in parallel.
The domestic effect surfaced quickly. When Lai’s Eswatini transit later encountered Chinese airspace pressure, Cheng attributed the setback to Taiwanese diplomatic failure in language closely aligned with Beijing’s own framing. The line between internal opposition and external narrative had begun to thin.
Between the Summits: The Eswatini Test
The Eswatini episode did more than embarrass Taiwan’s president. It revealed a method.
Seychelles, Mauritius, and Madagascar revoked overflight permissions that had reportedly been approved earlier, leaving Taipei little time to adjust. Beijing was widely understood to have linked future financial arrangements and debt relief discussions to compliance. The mechanism was straightforward: economic pressure applied to sovereign airspace decisions. It operated quickly and at minimal political cost.
Then came Europe. Germany and the Czech Republic quietly declined alternative transit requests. Poorer countries yielding to Chinese leverage is one thing; but European democracies choosing to stay out of disputes involving Beijing’s core interests is another. Their decisions reflected caution and strategic calculation and suggest a broader preference to avoid involvement when the political costs are real.
Washington’s response amounted largely to a State Department statement describing Taiwan as a “trusted and capable partner.” No visible diplomatic pressure targeted the governments that revoked permissions. No consequence followed for Beijing. Taipei received solidarity in language, but not in practice.
What the episode showed was straightforward. Beijing can now disrupt Taiwan’s international mobility across multiple regions, quickly and with limited visibility. Lai eventually reached Eswatini aboard King Mswati III’s personal aircraft, his arrival disclosed only after landing.
No single episode breaks Taiwan’s international position. But each denied transit and each reluctant partner adds weight to a cumulative pressure that increasingly looks structural rather than episodic.
Alignment Without Return
At this juncture, the deeper question becomes about what Taiwan’s decade of strategic alignment with Washington has ultimately purchased.
The costs are clear. Under Presidents Tsai Ing-wen and Lai Ching-te, Taiwan committed roughly $19 billion in U.S. arms purchases. Trade arrangements often favoured American priorities over those of Taiwanese exporters. Most significantly, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) pledged $165 billion to expand in Arizona, the largest foreign investment in U.S. history.
That strategy carries an uncomfortable contradiction. Taiwan’s importance has long rested on concentration: advanced chip production anchored on the island, difficult to replicate elsewhere. As production expands into Arizona, Japan, and Germany, that concentration gradually disperses.
The United States still has strong reasons to care about Taiwan. But part of the economic logic that once tied Taiwan’s security tightly to its geography is spreading outward. TSMC’s expansion was meant to deepen indispensability. It may also make Taiwan easier to support without making it necessary to defend.
The return on that alignment at the Trump-Xi summit was sobering. A three-year strategic stability framework took centre stage while Taiwan disappeared from the readout altogether. The frozen arms package remained unresolved. Taiwan surfaced only as a passing doctrinal reference from Xi, unanswered by the American president standing beside him.
The DPP is not wrong about democracy, sovereignty, or the threat posed by the CCP. Its problem is that it has pursued a principled foreign policy in a world increasingly focused on stability, risk management, and avoiding confrontation. In that environment, principles are often praised more readily than defended.
Taiwan’s Internal Condition
The preferences of Taiwan’s 23.5 million people are largely absent from geopolitical framing. Polling by the National Chengchi University Election Study Centre shows consistent support for maintaining the status quo. Most Taiwanese voters prefer ambiguity because it preserves ordinary life: work, housing, family, and planning without a permanent political crisis.
Yet this middle ground is eroding. Beijing pushes toward political absorption while Washington emphasises bilateral predictability. Neither fully respects the cautious centre where much of Taiwanese opinion resides.
The burden of governing under these conditions is considerable. Lai Ching-te holds a democratic mandate and a coherent strategic worldview yet governs under simultaneous external pressure and internal obstruction while facing a military threat evolving faster than Taiwan’s procurement timelines.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s principal security partner has formalised a three-year framework with Beijing centred on predictability and controlled competition. Decisions are increasingly made under conditions where external support may arrive too slow, too late or too uncertain.
Taiwan’s proposed $40 billion special defence budget was ultimately reduced to roughly $25 billion after prolonged KMT obstruction. The gap reflects more than fiscal disagreement. It reflects the difficulty of sustaining democratic consensus when the democracy itself has become part of the strategic contest surrounding it.
Between Dependence and Disappearance
The summits in Beijing did not transform Taiwan’s position. They clarified it. China shapes narratives before negotiations begin. It applies coordinated, low-cost pressure to restrict Taiwan’s mobility. Great powers increasingly prioritise stability in their own relationship over explicit commitments to smaller partners embedded within it.
Over the past decade, Taiwan has deepened its alignment with the United States in the expectation that integration would strengthen deterrence. These episodes suggest a different reality: major powers often privilege stability between themselves over durable commitments to actors caught within their rivalry.
One detail sharpens the timeline. The U.S.–China stability framework runs until 2028, overlapping with the period widely expected for major PLA capability milestones. The architecture of managed competition thus coincides with Taiwan’s most exposed window.
Taiwan’s semiconductor advantage sits at the centre of this. Once, it concentrated global dependence on the island. As production spreads outward, that concentration weakens. Whether Taiwan can preserve strategic indispensability while dispersing the industrial base that created it has become one of the central unresolved questions in cross-Strait politics.
Meng Kit Tang is a Singaporean freelance analyst and commentator who works as an aerospace engineer. He graduated from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), NTU, Singapore in 2025. He is also a regular contributor to Taiwan Insight.