Facing up to China

This article was published in The Economist 4 February 2010

Making room for a new superpower should not be confused with giving way to it.

For six decades now, Taiwan has been where the simmering distrust between China and America most risks boiling over. In 1986 Deng Xiaoping called it the “one obstacle in Sino-US relations”. So there was something almost ritualistic about the Chinese government’s protestations this week that it was shocked, shocked and angered by America’s decision to sell Taiwan $6 billion-worth of weaponry. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, passed in 1979, all American administrations must help arm Taiwan so that it can defend itself. And China, which has never renounced what it says is its right to “reunify” Taiwan by force, feels just as bound to protest when arms deals go through. After a squall briefly roils the waters, relations revert to their usual choppy but unthreatening passage.

With luck, this will happen again. But the squalls are increasing in number, and the world’s most important bilateral relationship is getting stormy. If it goes wrong, historians will no doubt heap much of the blame on China’s aggression; but they will also measure Barack Obama on this issue, perhaps more than any other.