US-China-Taiwan in the Age of Trump and Biden Published

Dean Chen (Political Science) published a new book, US-China-Taiwan in the Age of Trump and Biden: Towards a Nationalist Strategy in July 2022 (Routledge). He describes the book’s content as “Heightened competition between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) reflects not just a structural transformation in the prevailing international balance of power but also a significant shift in the U.S. strategic lenses from a liberal internationalist perspective toward a U.S.-centric nationalist (or “Jacksonian”) orientation. That stance has driven Washington’s more confrontational approach toward Beijing and a much-bolstered support of Taipei by both the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations. Biden’s presidency has partially reverted the multilateralist strategic stance of the pre-Trump era, but strong nationalist forces and hardened China sentiments unleashed by Trump constrain the Biden administration from returning to the pre-Trump U.S.-PRC engagement era. Both Trump and Biden adjusted the US One-China policy to better accommodate elevated U.S.-Taiwan relations, especially with their formal inclusion of President Ronald Reagan’s Six Assurances into the One-China policy description, which previously only included the Taiwan Relations Act and the Three U.S.-PRC Joint Communiqués. That has given the U.S. more elasticity and creativity to deepen Washington’s security, political and economic ties with Taiwan, without abandoning America’s longstanding position on the Taiwan Strait.

Dean notes that “The book’s first chapter is a collaboration between me and a former Ramapo/HGS student Michaela Zabel (class of 2021), who doubled-major in Political Science and International Studies. Her honor thesis which I had the privilege to supervise contributed to some of the theoretical framework discussion used in this book.”  The book was profiled in Politico on August 4, 2022 in their China Watch blog.

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