How Taiwan’s Top Diplomat Sees the World
Foreign Minister Joseph Wu thinks a conflict with China is neither imminent nor inevitable, so long as international support for the island does not waver.
Wu has to walk a careful line.
Photographer: Vladimir Simicek/AFP/Getty Images
Few diplomats would envy Joseph Wu his job. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister oversees formal relations with only 14 tiny nations (soon to be 13, if Honduras follows through on its decision last week to switch recognition to the People’s Republic of China). A former political science professor and Ohio State University graduate, Wu recently became the first Taiwanese foreign minister in decades to meet openly with US officials in the Washington, DC area. These increasingly close ties between the US and Taiwan have caused China to intensify military exercises and ramp up threats against the island. Beijing has blacklisted Wu himself for supposedly being “stubbornly pro-Taiwan independence.”
How well Wu and Taiwan navigate these minefields will help determine whether a devastating conflict over Taiwan breaks out in the next few years or whether it can be postponed indefinitely, as it has since the birth of the People’s Republic in 1949. With US-China tensions rising, I spoke with Wu in Taipei last week. Here is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation: