The United States and Japan risk moving the goalposts of their “one China” policies well outside of their previous agreements with China.
Taiwan is expected to be on the agenda during President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in mid-May. Speculation has focused on Xi’s reported desire for Trump to specify that Washington “opposes” Taiwan’s independence, and on Beijing’s complaints about the Trump administration’s December announcement of an $11 billion arms sales package for Taiwan. But President Xi is also likely to raise Japan’s involvement with Taiwan in the wake of public statements last November by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggesting that Tokyo might intervene militarily if China attacked the island.
At the time, President Xi raised the issue in a phone call with Trump, who then reportedly cautioned Takaichi about provoking Beijing. Since then, however, the Trump administration appears to have implicitly endorsed Takaichi’s position on the Taiwan issue. During her visit to Washington in March, the two sides reaffirmed their shared commitment to “peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
Beijing has reacted vehemently to these developments, insisting that Washington and Tokyo are violating their historical “one China” commitments, and demanding that they stop aiding and abetting Taiwanese “separatism.” China also launched large-scale joint military exercises around Taiwan in December, shortly after Takaichi’s statements and the US arms sales announcement. For their part, Tokyo and Washington insist that they are upholding their “one China” policies and that Beijing is instead violating a prior agreement to resolve the Taiwan issue peacefully.
The US and Japanese “One China” Policy: A History Lesson
A brief reminder is in order of the relevant US and Japanese historical commitments to China. When Japan and China established diplomatic ties in 1972, Tokyo recognized Beijing as the “sole legal government of China” and affirmed that it “fully understands and respects” the Chinese position that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of the PRC.” When Washington normalized relations with Beijing in 1979, it only “acknowledged” the Chinese position that there is one China and Taiwan is part of it.
But the 1972 Shanghai Communique, signed during President Richard Nixon’s historic visit, had added that the United States “does not challenge that position.” Finally, in the 1982 US-China joint communique on the subject of US arms sales to Taiwan, Washington stated that it “has no intention of…pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan.’”
The East Asian regional security environment has evolved considerably since then. Taiwan democratized in the 1990s, and the expansion of China’s economic, diplomatic, and military clout has dramatically altered the equation. These trends have prompted both Washington and Tokyo over time to amend and reinterpret their “one China” policies—without, as they insist, “changing” them. For example, both the United States and Japan now assert that the sovereignty dispute between China and Taiwan should be resolved with the assent of the Taiwan people.
Perhaps the most important amendment, however, has been the inclusion of the notion that the dispute should be resolved peacefully. When President Jimmy Carter announced normalization with China in 1979, he stated that the United States had “an interest in the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue.” But President Ronald Reagan went further than that when his administration signed the 1982 communique. He specified in an internal US memorandum that Washington’s readiness to reduce arms sales to Taiwan was “conditioned absolutely upon the continued commitment of China to a peaceful solution of the Taiwan-PRC differences” and that “the linkage between these two matters is a permanent imperative of US foreign policy.”
The “Peaceful Resolution” of the Taiwan Question
Every US administration since then has essentially upheld this linkage by asserting the “expectation” that cross-Strait differences would be “resolved by peaceful means.” The Japanese government, over the same period, adopted the same principle. Indeed, Washington and Tokyo declared jointly in 2005 that one of their “common strategic objectives” was to “encourage the peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan Strait through dialogue.”
Ever since then, Beijing has “firmly opposed” this US-Japanese “strategic objective” partly because, contrary to Reagan’s 1982 internal memorandum, China never made a “commitment to a peaceful solution” of the Taiwan issue. Instead, in the 1982 joint communique, Beijing only reiterated its longstanding “fundamental policy of striving for peaceful reunification.” Beijing has consistently maintained this position for decades because renouncing the use of force would surrender China’s military leverage and deterrent on an issue that is deemed vital to both Chinese nationalism and the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
Washington and Tokyo, however, appear nonetheless to have maintained the view that Beijing had pledged not to use force against Taiwan—basically adopting the Reagan linkage, which was based on a false premise. The characterization of this linkage has evolved. Washington and Tokyo initially expressed the “expectation” or “hope” that the Taiwan issue would be resolved peacefully, perhaps reflecting an implicit understanding that their expectations and hopes did not quite constitute a Chinese commitment.
But the rhetorical framing has since gotten stronger. In a January 2026 speech, the director of the American Institute in Taiwan said: “The United States has always insisted on the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait differences.” Similarly, a former Japanese diplomat who was centrally involved with the Taiwan issue wrote that peaceful resolution was an “indispensable element” of constructive Japan-China relations. These formulations certainly suggest elevating an expectation to a requirement.
This preoccupation in Washington and Tokyo with the threat of a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan diverts attention—intentionally or otherwise—away from the erosion and obfuscation of their “one China” policies. The latter is reflected in both Takaichi’s November statements and recent policy pronouncements from the Trump administration. In response to Chinese complaints about her statements, Takaichi has insisted that Tokyo continues to abide by its 1972 normalization agreement with Beijing.
But that does not explain how Japanese military intervention against a Chinese attack on Taiwan would be consistent with Tokyo’s 1972 statement that it “fully understands and respects” Beijing’s view that Taiwan is part of China. Nor does it clarify Tokyo’s position on Taiwan independence. Indeed, the US Intelligence Community assessed in March 2026 that Takaichi’s November statements “represent a significant shift for a sitting Japanese prime minister.”
On the US side, the Trump administration’s December 2025 National Security Strategy upheld “our longstanding declaratory policy” on Taiwan. Still, it conspicuously refrained from referring to it as “our one China policy,” as previous such documents have done. Presumably, the omission was deliberate and reflects some level of ambivalence about reiterating “one China.”
Trump’s January 2026 National Defense Strategy did not mention Taiwan by name at all. Still, it emphasized that the United States plans to “build, posture, and sustain a strong denial defense along the First Island Chain” in the western Pacific. This formulation can be traced directly to Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby and implicitly refers to a strategy of denying Taiwan to the PRC.
The Sources of Chinese Coercion
Two potential dangers are emerging here. The first is the possibility that Washington and Tokyo may be making their “one China” normalization commitments contingent on Beijing’s supposed pledge not to use force against Taiwan. In effect, they have unilaterally and retroactively imposed conditionality on their own pledges regarding Taiwan. They appear to be implying that China’s abandonment of a commitment to peaceful resolution—a commitment Beijing never made—allows them under new historical circumstances to reinterpret or fudge their own “one China” policies.
But Beijing itself may have a stronger case for conditionality: that its efforts to “strive for” peaceful resolution have been contingent on Tokyo and Washington not challenging the idea that Taiwan is part of China, or not drifting toward (and/or letting Taipei drift toward) a de facto “one China, one Taiwan” policy—which is what appears to be happening.
The second emerging danger is that Washington and Tokyo are essentially adopting the view that China cannot be allowed to gain control over Taiwan under any circumstances. This view has been gaining adherents over the past several years, based on a judgment that Taiwan is a strategic linchpin vital to US and Japanese geostrategic interests. For adherents of this view, focusing on a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan as a threat to regional stability and security—which undoubtedly it would be—serves to obscure their real bottom line: that even a peaceful Chinese takeover of Taiwan would be an unacceptable threat to regional security.
This allows them to make Chinese belligerence—Beijing’s coercive behavior in violation of a supposed promise to resolve the Taiwan issue peacefully—the core problem, and the justification or excuse for retreating from Washington’s and Tokyo’s “one China” normalization commitments.
The fact is that China has never abandoned its pursuit of a peaceful resolution. Beijing is not looking for an opportunity or an excuse to attack Taiwan. On the contrary, it is still looking to Washington and Tokyo for reasons not to do so. When Beijing resorts to coercive tactics and military saber-rattling, it is usually because it judges that its diplomatic demands on Washington and Tokyo for clarity and compliance regarding their “one China” commitments are being ignored or dismissed.
This is why the US-Japanese preoccupation with the Chinese military threat and how to deter it is so risky and potentially counterproductive: it comes at the expense of pursuing non-military ways that Washington and Tokyo might give Beijing reasons not to attack. Those ways include credible and persuasive assurances that their “one China” policies remain substantive and operative, and that they have not adopted the goal of Taiwan’s permanent separation from China. Of course, such assurances will not be persuasive if Washington and Japan have indeed adopted that goal.
Such assurances will require more than just rhetorical reaffirmation of US and Japanese commitments to “one China,” or to opposing “changes to the status quo,” especially since there is no mutually agreed-upon definition of “the status quo.” It will require more clarity than that on what Washington and Tokyo mean when they invoke “one China,” and on the limits of US and Japanese support for those on Taiwan who claim that it is already a sovereign independent country and have already adopted a de facto “one China, one Taiwan” policy in pursuit of permanent separation from the mainland.
The United States and Japan should do everything they can to enhance Taiwan’s security and to deter or prevent a Chinese attack. They should also do everything they can to protect Taiwan’s democracy and promote its involvement in global affairs. But they will not succeed in doing so by misrepresenting Beijing’s historical commitments and strategic intentions, or by obfuscating their own. Nor will they succeed if they continue to approach the Taiwan issue primarily as a military problem. Washington and Tokyo should instead confront the strategic dilemma over Taiwan that they played a central role in creating, and work diplomatically with Beijing and Taipei to find an off-ramp toward cross-Strait stability.
About the Author: Paul Heer
Paul Heer is a non-resident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He served as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia from 2007 to 2015. He is the author of Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia(Cornell University Press, 2018). He was a visiting intelligence fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and was elected a life member in 2001. He was the Robert E. Wilhelm fellow at MIT’s Center for International Studies, and later served as adjunct professor at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.
