{"id":295579,"date":"2025-05-19T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T11:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=295579"},"modified":"2025-05-19T04:08:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T03:08:17","slug":"growing-tensions-in-the-taiwan-strait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/05\/growing-tensions-in-the-taiwan-strait\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing Tensions in the Taiwan Strait"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>16 May 2025 &#8211;<\/em> Tensions in the Taiwan Strait are growing.\u00a0 Even before Taiwanese elected Lai Ching-te (also known as William Lai) as president in January 2024, Chinese officials voiced strong opposition to him, calling him &#8220;a separatist&#8221; and &#8220;an instigator of war&#8221;.\u00a0 Since he has become president, Chinese government attacks have become even harder, calling him a &#8220;destroyer of cross-Strait peace.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Along with the harsher verbal attacks, the Chinese government has increased military execises around Taiwan and in Taiwanese air space.\u00a0 The Chinese have developed increasingly sophisticated weapons including long-range missiles.\u00a0 In response, Taiwan has increased the training of its military.\u00a0 The intensity of the current tensions recall the period when Chen Shui-bian was president (2000-2008).\u00a0 Both China and Taiwan look ahead to 2027 when there will be the start of the new campaign for president.<\/p>\n<p>The increased military exercises of Mainland China around Taiwan can lead to miscalculations and thus military incidents.\u00a0 What is unclear for the moment is what will be U.S. government policy.\u00a0 The policies of President Trump both economic and security policy seem to change by the day.\u00a0 It is likely that there are differences of opinion among leaders in the Trump administration, and the Chinese government may have difficulty to analyse U.S. policy.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, the Taiwan Strait merits close watching, and to the extent possible tension reduction efforts made.<\/p>\n<p><em>______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Rene-Wadlow--e1695369695147.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-244689\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Rene-Wadlow--e1695369695147.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a> Ren\u00e9 Wadlow is a member of the <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/\" >TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a><em>. He <\/em><em>is President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation and problem-solving in economic and social issues<\/em><em>, and <\/em><em>editor of <\/em>Transnational Perspectives<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>16 May 2025 &#8211; Even before Taiwanese elected Lai Ching-te as president in Jan 2024, Chinese officials voiced opposition, calling him &#8220;a separatist&#8221; and &#8220;an instigator of war.&#8221; Chinese officials attacks have become even harder, calling him a &#8220;destroyer of cross-Strait peace.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":244689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[244,120,1148],"class_list":["post-295579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-china","tag-conflict","tag-taiwan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295580,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295579\/revisions\/295580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}