http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/us/politics/trump-speaks-with-taiwans-leader-a-possible-affront-to-china.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump spoke by telephone with Taiwan’s president on Friday, a striking break with nearly four decades of diplomatic practice that could precipitate a major rift with China even before Mr. Trump takes office.
Mr. Trump’s office said he spoke with the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, “who offered her congratulations.” He is believed to be the first president or president-elect who has spoken to a Taiwanese leader since at least 1979, when the United States severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan as part of its recognition of the People’s Republic of China.
In the statement, Mr. Trump’s office said the two leaders noted “the close economic, political, and security ties” between Taiwan and the United States. Mr. Trump, it said, “also congratulated President Tsai on becoming President of Taiwan earlier this year.”
Mr. Trump’s motives in taking the call were not clear. In a Twitter message late Friday, he said Ms. Tsai “CALLED ME.”
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But diplomats with ties to Taiwan said it was highly unlikely that the Taiwanese leader would have made the call without arranging it in advance, and Taiwan’s Central News Agency hailed it as “historic.”
The president-elect has shown little heed for the nuances of international diplomacy, holding a series of unscripted phone calls to foreign leaders that have roiled sensitive relationships with Britain, India and Pakistan. On Thursday, the White House urged Mr. Trump to use experts from the State Department to prepare him for these exchanges.
The White House was not told about Mr. Trump’s call until after it happened, according to a senior administration official. The potential fallout from the conversation was significant, this official said, noting that the Chinese government issued a bitter protest after the United States sold weapons to Taiwan as part of a well-established arms agreement grudgingly accepted by Beijing.
Mr. Trump’s call with President Tsai is a bigger provocation, though the Chinese government did not immediately issue a formal response. Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway province and has adamantly opposed the attempts of any country to carry on official relations with it.
On Nov. 14, Mr. Trump spoke with Xi Jinping, China’s president, and a statement from Mr. Trump’s transition team said the two men had a “clear sense of mutual respect.”
Initial reaction from China about Friday’s telephone call was surprise, verging on disbelief. “This is a big event, the first challenge the president-elect has made to China,” said Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “This must be bad news for the Chinese leadership.”
Official state-run media have portrayed Mr. Trump in a positive light, casting him as a businessman China could get along with. He was favored among Chinese commentators during the election over Hillary Clinton, who was perceived as being too hard on China.
Mr. Trump’s exchange touched “the most sensitive spot” for China’s foreign policy, Mr. Shi said. The government, he said, would most likely interpret it as encouraging Ms. Tsai, the leader of the party that favors independence from the mainland, to continue to resist pressure from Beijing.
Among diplomats in the United States, there was similar shock. “This is a change of historic proportions,” said Evan Madeiros, a former senior director of Asian affairs in the Obama administration. “The real question is, what are the Chinese going to do?”
“This is not only suggesting that the basis of the relationship with China may not be respected,” Mr. Madeiros added, “but also that the Trump presidency is willing to give Taiwan enhanced status, perhaps equivalent to diplomatic status.”
Ties between the United States and Taiwan are currently managed through quasi-official institutions. The American Institute in Taiwan issues visas and provides other basic consular services, and Taiwan has an equivalent institution with offices in several cities in the United States.
These arrangements are the outgrowth of the so-called One China policy that has governed relations between the United States and China since President Richard M. Nixon’s historic meeting with Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1972. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter formally recognized Beijing as the sole government of China, abrogating its ties with Taipei a year later.
The call also raised questions of conflicts of interest.
Reports in the Taiwanese press said that Mr. Trump has explored building a luxury hotel as part of a major development next to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. The reports cited the mayor of Taoyuan, Cheng Wen-tsan, as confirming that a representative of the Trump Organization visited in September and that Mr. Trump’s son Eric planned to visit by the end of the year.
A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, Amanda Miller, said the company had “no plans for expansion into Taiwan nor is Eric Trump planning a visit.” She did not address whether an official had visited.
Mr. Trump’s call with the Taiwanese president came just as President Obama delivered a more subtle, but also aggressive, rebuff of China: He blocked, by executive order, an effort by Chinese investors to buy a semiconductor production firm called Aixtron.
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Mr. Obama took the action on national security grounds, after an intelligence review concluded that the technology could be used for “military applications” and help provide an “overall technical body of knowledge and experience” to the Chinese.
The decision is likely to accelerate tension with Beijing, as Chinese authorities make it extraordinarily difficult for American technology companies, including Google and Facebook, to gain access to the Chinese market, and Washington seeks to slow China’s acquisition of critical technology.
Mr. Trump has made little effort to avoid antagonizing China. He hascharacterized climate change as a “Chinese hoax,” designed to undermine the American economy. He has said that China’s manipulation of its currency deepened a trade deficit with the United States. And he has threatened to impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods, a proposal that critics said would set off a trade war.
By happenstance, just hours before Mr. Trump’s conversation with Ms. Tsai, Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of state who designed the “One China” policy, was in Beijing meeting with Mr. Xi. It was unclear if Mr. Kissinger, 93, was carrying any message from Mr. Trump, with whom he met again recently in his role as the Republican Party’s foreign policy sage.
“The presidential election has taken place in the United States and we are now in the key moment. We, on the Chinese side, are watching the situation very closely. Now it is in the transition period,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Kissinger in front of a group of reporters.
“Overall,” he said, “we hope to see the China-U.S. relationship moving ahead in a sustained and stable manner.”
A small, hardline faction of Republicans has periodically urged a more confrontational approach to Beijing, and many of President George W. Bush’s advisers were pressing such an approach in the first months of his presidency in 2001. But the attacks of Sept. 11 defused that move, and Iraq became the No. 1 enemy. After that, Mr. Bush needed China — for North Korea diplomacy, counterterrorism and as an economic partner — and any movement toward confrontation was squashed.
For his part, Mr. Trump has shown little concern about ruffling feathers in his exchanges with leaders. He also spoke on Friday with the Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, who has called Mr. Obama a “son of a whore,” threatened to shift Manila’s focus to China, and been accused of ordering the extrajudicial killings of thousands of suspected drug dealers.
Earlier this week, Mr. Trump appeared to accept an invitation from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to visit Pakistan, a country that Mr. Obama has steered clear of in his nearly eight years in office, largely because of tensions between Washington and Islamabad over counterterrorism policy and nuclear proliferation.
Lawmakers expressed alarm at the implications of Mr. Trump’s freewheeling approach.
Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, learned of the Taiwan call before taking off on a plane, and dashed off a quick series of Twitter posts.
“What has happened in the last 48 hours is not a shift. These are major pivots in foreign policy w/out any plan. That’s how wars start,” Mr. Murphy wrote. “It’s probably time we get a Secretary of State nominee on board. Preferably w experience. Like, really really soon.”
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