What does the Taiwan status quo mean?

 August 3, 2022

What does the Taiwan status quo mean?

I want to make a quick note about the meaning of the term "status quo" in the context of US-Taiwan-China relations. There is a bit of a linguistic confusion about what it means. On the one hand, what people more commonly understand is that the "status quo" allows Taiwan to maintain its functional independence on an ongoing basis. But the more proper and useful understanding of the term is that the "status quo" is the complex network of military, diplomatic and economic maneuvering that allows high-level talks like the meeting that just happened in Taipei over the past few days. This entire painstakingly constructed edifice of diplomatic structures allows the Taiwan government to put everything else on hold at a high-level, in order to meet with US officials, like how the Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen met with US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just a little while ago. The stringent effort to maintain commentary on the "status quo" during those meetings means that there was a structure that had been constructed to keep the whole government running without the entire functional attention of the high officials for a few hours, while they met with the US delegation. It's important to really understand how Taiwan's unique geostrategic position relies on a very steady constant vigilance of the government, except when they put a "status quo" construction in place to allow these high-level diplomatic talks to happen. It's not unlike the Cold War-era Nagorno-Karabakh situation, but far more creative. Notice, for instance, that Ms. Pelosi's plane flew over the east of the Philippines on the way to Taipei, where Taiwan has tried to build up selective contacts and partnerships over the past years, to secure that side of the sea against Chinese influence for just such an occasion.

This is just to note that the task that is I'm going is not to maintain the previous "status quo" that allowed this meeting to happen, and thanks for Taiwan's helping starting up the US semiconductor chip industry, but rather to continue to progress toward conditions that allow the construction of a new "status quo" structure that will allow Taiwan to maintain its functional independence, its important role in controlling the bad actions of China, and its critical role in extending logistical support to the nascent US high-tech manufacturing industry in semiconductor chips.

A cautious conservative posture toward the already previous status quo with respect to Taiwan relations doesn't serve our interest at this point. What has to be understood is that the "status quo" is a temporary structure constructed alongside Taiwan's functional independence that operated during the short period of time that Taiwan met with US officials the other day. Now that the US has taken advantage of this structure for perhaps the largest economic and geostrategic advantage that we've ever gained in the 21st-century, our responsibility in thanks, and for securing that opportunity, is to push hard for the conditions of mutual prosperity that allows for the construction of a new structure of "status quo". In short, to be enthusiastic and progressive about the high-tech economy and push hard to improve our economic conditions through high-tech sophistication.