What was long feared to materialize under the Joe Biden administration has finally happened. According to a Reuters report, when asked about the USA’s stance on the imperialistic ‘One-China policy’ — the US State Department and its spokesperson Ned Price on Wednesday during a regular briefing told the reporters: “Yes … our policy has not changed.”
While the decision does not come as a surprise to anyone, considering Joe Biden’s allegiances to Xi Jinping and China but the experts were hoping that the new Democrat President would show some more maturity while dealing with the delicate policy issue.
Under the Trump administration, the signals were increasingly becoming strong that Washington could any day decouple itself from the ‘One-China policy’ and recognize Taiwan as a diplomatic sovereign nation. At one point, it looked like New Delhi was waiting for Washington to go ahead and announce the major policy shift so that it could do the same and set a precedent for the rest of the globe to follow.
However, after Trump’s defeat, the process got slowed down and with Biden getting access to the White House, it was only a matter of time before the plug was pulled off the entire rendezvous to assimilate Taiwan or any other country currently under the subjugation of China to normal.
The Biden team has quashed the dreams of anything happening on those lines and the millions of Taiwanese will have to start from scratch to win their freedom. It’d be fair to suffice that with Ned Price’s statements, Biden has crushed Taiwan and Tibet’s hopes and killed Hong Kong’s spirit. The latter two also stood an outside chance of gaining their independence under the Trump rule but Biden has made sure that avenue remains closed for the next four years, at least.
The decision by Joe Biden comes at a time when Taiwan has outpaced its autocratic neighboring country China in terms of economic growth, suggesting the little island country country can do more than ‘just fine’ on its own. Reported by TFI, according to data released by Taiwan’s statistics agency last Friday, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased by 4.94 per cent in the final three months of 2020 compared with the same period a year earlier, taking Taiwan’s expansion throughout 2020 to 3 percent. Meanwhile, China, which continues to claim authority over Taiwan and its sovereignty only registered a 2.3 percent rise.
Taiwan has long been battling Chinese excursions in its territory and has been looking to gain diplomatic recognition from countries around the globe. Since the beginning of 2020, Taiwan had started winning global recognition thanks to its superb handling of the Wuhan coronavirus and undertaking the laborious mask diplomacy campaign, and helping countries across the world battle the deadly virus.
However, all that has come to a naught as the USA has chickened out and with a major player bowing out rather meekly, the chances of Taiwan being recognized have gone down considerably. A sorry yet tragic end to the resurgence of a country that had so much potential.