00:00Professor, what are you seeing from the Trump-Xi summit so far in relation to what it means
00:05for Taiwan?
00:06Xi Jinping or his delegations as the US delegation directed that, I mean, if the Taiwan issue
00:13is not properly managed, this could cause like conflict on both sides, which is not
00:18welcoming on both from the US or from Chinese perspective.
00:23But they didn't really talk about the US response.
00:27Marco Rubio also stated that the US policy on Taiwan has not been changed.
00:34So I think the United States is standing on a very firm ground that Taiwan is not a topic
00:40to be discussed.
00:41But I think the US position is very straightforward.
00:45They are not taking Taiwan as bargaining chips.
00:48It's not something that they are going to negotiate with China.
00:51So from Taiwan's perspective, what we can take from this is US support or US
00:56position on Taiwan has not been changed.
01:00And it's likely will not be changed in the foreseeable future.
01:05There's a big emphasis on the US side about China buying more American agricultural products.
01:11Now why is this so important to the US?
01:14And can Xi Jinping use those business goals as leverage to achieve his own goals for Taiwan?
01:19When Trump talked about trade, he always talked about it has to be fair, it has to be equal,
01:26which means if you have trade deficit, you have to buy our stuff, right?
01:31And what's the most powerful and non-sacrificing goods that the United States would like to
01:38sell to China?
01:40Soybeans and beef.
01:41If we think about whether the United States want to sell those high-tech microchips, GPUs,
01:46and those AI servers to China, the answer is probably no, because they don't want to lose
01:51in this AI competition with China.
01:54Xi Jinping has a lot of tools that will be able to persuade Trump to use Taiwan as an item
02:02of negotiation.
02:02But the security of the first island chain, the peace of the Taiwan Strait is US national
02:11interest.
02:12It's not something that can be negotiable because this is, to the US perspective, this
02:19is about the survivability of the US hegemon in the Eastern Front.
02:24Politico recently came out with an article that pointed out that there are less China hawks
02:29in the second Trump administration.
02:31Does this show Trump softening his stance on Beijing?
02:35Marco Rubio is probably one of the tough China hawks that I have observed in the US political
02:44line.
02:45And he's serving as the Secretary of State.
02:48So how would we deduct a conclusion that China is softening its policy and strategy towards
03:01China?
03:02China?
03:02If we see the actual operations, I mean, the US policy towards China has been actually pretty,
03:08pretty hawk.
03:09I mean, on the turf, on the technology competitions, and on the security parameters around the so-called
03:18the East Asia, the Indo-Pacific area, I mean, even beefed up Japan to actually, to side with the United
03:28States,
03:29side with Taiwan, to compete, I mean, to actually further deter against China.
03:34And I don't see any softball here.
03:36And I think it'd be so bad.
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