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Taiwan’s Doubts About America Are Growing. That Could Be Dangerous.

2024-01-20 00:00:00.0 纽约时报-亚洲新闻原网页

There are markers all over Taiwan, like this one in Taipei, of its courtship of the United States.

Taiwan’s Doubts About America Are Growing. That Could Be Dangerous.

Will deepening skepticism about the United States as a trustworthy nation diminish Taiwan’s belief that it could fend off China?

There are markers all over Taiwan, like this one in Taipei, of its courtship of the United States.Credit...

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By Damien Cave and Amy Chang Chien

Photographs by Lam Yik Fei

Reporting from Tainan and Taipei in Taiwan

Jan. 20, 2024

The collection of American memorabilia, vast and well-lit in a busy area of City Hall in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan, reflected decades of eager courtship. Maps highlighted sister cities in Ohio and Arizona.

There was a celebration of baseball, an American flag laid out on a table. And in the middle of it all, a card sent to the United States that seemed to reveal the thinking of Tainan, a metropolis of 1.8 million, and nearly all of Taiwan.

“Together, stronger,” it said. “Solidarity conquers all.”

The message was aspirational — a graphic illustration of profound insecurity. Taiwan is a democratic not-quite nation of 23 million, threatened by a covetous China, with a future dependent on how the United States responds to the ultimate request: to fight the world’s other superpower if it attacks and endangers the island’s self-rule.

Now more than ever, the fraught psychology of that predicament is showing signs of wear. With China asserting its claim to the island with greater force, and the United States increasingly divided over how active it should be in global affairs, Taiwan is a bundle of contradictions and doubts, less about its own government’s plans or even Beijing’s than the intentions of Washington.

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Damien Cave is an international correspondent for The Times, covering the Indo-Pacific region. He is based in Sydney, Australia. More about Damien Cave

Amy Chang Chien covers news in mainland China and Taiwan. She is based in Taipei. More about Amy Chang Chien

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