The Deterioration of US-China-Japan Relations and Its Implications for the Issue of Taiwan

The Deterioration of US-China-Japan Relations and Its Implications for the Issue of Taiwan¹

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, many believed that China might follow suit by taking military action against Taiwan very soon. Although no military operation was reported, suspicion about China’s military actions remained. Such suspicion was denied by China, and Chinese President Xi Jinping even told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that the US was trying to trick China into invading Taiwan, but that he would not take the bait. Although multiple explanations of Xi’s comments are possible, it seems that what the Chinese leader most wanted to convey to European leaders is that, even with China’s repeated military exercises against Taiwan, China remains very cautious about falling into the “US-set trap,” trying as much as possible to avoid using traditional military operations to resolve the Taiwan issue. If this explanation reflects the real intention behind Xi’s comments, it is doomed to be ignored by most foreign leaders simply because such willingness to resolve the issue by peaceful means is merely something consistent with PRC attitudes and policies toward Taiwan for decades and already well known to the outside world. However, the increasingly widening gap between Chinese words and actions has prevented foreign leaders from embracing it at face value, especially when China has already become an imminent security threat in the eyes of Western leaders. It is obvious that such a circumstance is quite negative and unfortunate for the PRC, but it is the reality that China must face.

Looking back through the past several decades, the international environment concerning Taiwan was basically in favor of the PRC’s interests rather than those of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. One big reason behind this was that China succeeded in formulating a “One China” consensus with the United States and Japan—the two most influential countries in the Western world in the 1970s. Based on the “One China” consensus, the United States and Japan recognized the PRC as the sole legal government representing China in the world and severed their diplomatic relations with the ROC immediately after the completion of Japan-PRC and US-PRC diplomatic normalization.

Compared to the several decades during which China had enjoyed a relatively favorable international environment for addressing the Taiwan issue, China now has to face a more unfavorable and even dangerous situation in handling the issue. The fundamental reason for this lies in the unprecedented deterioration of China’s relations with the United States and Japan after President Trump took office in 2017. After Trump started his second term in 2025, the overall relationship between China and the United States further deteriorated, and both sides are clearly preparing for a possible military clash, even a full-scale war, in the future. Meanwhile, while Sino-Japanese relations remained troubled, Japan-Taiwan relations maintained good momentum. The unprecedented deterioration of US-China-Japan relations will have significant implications for the resolution of the Taiwan issue. It indicates at least that the “One China” consensus among the three countries is no longer in good shape, if not already hollowed out completely.

No trilateral relationship is more important to the peace, security, and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region than the US-China-Japan relationship. And if there is one issue that vividly embodies the ups and downs of these relations since the 1970s, it is the issue of Taiwan. The issue addressed here refers to the question that emerged during Sino-US and Sino-Japanese diplomatic normalization negotiations concerning how to terminate the intergovernmental relations that the United States and Japan had with the ROC and what kind of non-governmental relations they would build thereafter. Under Cold War circumstances, the Taiwan issue was the greatest diplomatic challenge facing the three countries, particularly during the diplomatic normalization negotiations in the 1970s.
As a result of a series of secret negotiations between China and the United States and between China and Japan, a “One China” consensus was eventually reached. Both the United States and Japan recognized that the PRC, not the ROC, is the sole legitimate government that represents China in the international community. Although the two governments gave no clear recognition that Taiwan belongs to the PRC and the PRC made no further argument about it at the time, a temporary compromise was achieved during the prolonged normalization negotiations.

Under this ambiguous and fragile consensus, with all the related controversial issues, including the enactment of the Taiwan Relations Act by the US Congress, the continued sale of arms to Taiwan by the US government, and continued exchanges between US and Japanese politicians and Taiwan, the two governments severed their diplomatic relations with the ROC and formally established diplomatic ties with the PRC, respectively, in 1972 and 1979. It was against this background that the political and security framework of Sino-US and Sino-Japanese relations was constructed. The trilateral relationship entered a “golden age,” relatively thriving until the mid-1990s and somehow surviving until the beginning of the first Trump administration in 2017.

A new factor came into play when the Republic of China on Taiwan succeeded in democratization and held its first presidential election in 1996. Democratization, which began in the late 1980s, not only awakened national identity, in which people identified themselves as Taiwanese or as both Taiwanese and Chinese, but also “created a broad and sympathetic coalition” in the US Congress,² and prompted attitude and policy changes in the United States toward Taiwan. Under these new circumstances, the favorable environment for the PRC to handle the Taiwan issue began to fade away. Although the “One China” consensus among the three countries remained relatively stable and the PRC was still able to get US presidents to make remarks like the “Three Nos” (by Bill Clinton) or call Taiwan’s leader (Chen Shui-bian) a “troublemaker” (by George W. Bush), many signs indicated that relations among Taiwan, the United States, and Japan were gradually growing closer than ever before. And when Trump took office in 2017, the attitudes and policies of the United States toward the PRC took an across-the-board downturn, which led to the unprecedentedly confrontational Sino-US relationship in the second Trump administration in 2025 and the comprehensive deterioration of the US-China-Japan relations consequently.

Looking at the present situation, many new developments regarding the Taiwan issue are apparently not in China’s favor. The cooling of China-Taiwan relations, the intensification of US-China tensions, and the deepening of US-Taiwan and Japan-Taiwan ties all have negative effects on Sino-US and Sino-Japanese relations, which are not conducive to the stable development of relations and the diplomatic management of the Taiwan issue. As a result, the “One China” consensus among China, the US, and Japan is becoming increasingly hollowed out, as pro-Taiwan attitudes and policies taken by the two countries appear in various forms. Under completely new circumstances, China could be compelled to pursue non-peaceful means to resolve the Taiwan issue, as the repeated military exercises surrounding Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have already demonstrated, although the gray zone strategy seems to be China’s preferred choice at the present time.
The current critical situation surrounding Taiwan is not limited to the Taiwan Strait alone but has become one of the greatest concerns in the Asia-Pacific region, threatening to spark military conflict and even a large-scale war. In this challenging international environment, examining the history and current state of US-China-Japan relations, which are deeply connected to the Taiwan issue, is of great academic and practical significance from the perspective of ensuring peace and prosperity in the Taiwan Strait, the Asia-Pacific region, and beyond.
This article examines how the “One China” consensus was formulated and gradually hollowed out among the three countries, how the Taiwan issue has brought about the ups and downs of Sino-US and Sino-Japanese relations since the 1970s, and what impact the current unprecedented deterioration of the trilateral relationship will have on the management of the Taiwan issue and beyond in the years ahead.

The “One China” Consensus

The most important aspect of understanding the origins of the Taiwan issue is the formulation of the “One China” consensus by the United States, the PRC, and Japan during diplomatic normalization in the 1970s. The PRC’s position on the Taiwan issue has been consistent and crystal clear: there is only one China in the world, Taiwan is a part of China, and the government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legitimate government representing the whole of China.³ Therefore, countries that wish to have diplomatic relations with the PRC should not also have diplomatic relations with the ROC in Taiwan. This “One China Principle” advocated by the PRC has been ambiguously but widely acknowledged by many countries, including Japan and the United States, and has thus become a fundamental principle of PRC foreign policy since the 1970s.

In response to the PRC’s principled stance on the Taiwan issue, Japan and the United States generally adopted a conciliatory stance during diplomatic normalization talks. At the beginning, it seemed that the “One China Principle” was far beyond the capacity of the US government to accept; however, urgent strategic needs such as seeking an early end to the Vietnam War, which had become a quagmire for the US government, and playing the PRC card to contain the Soviet Union, had effectively softened the US attitude toward the PRC’s claims. During repeated diplomatic discussions with the PRC, the Nixon administration adopted the “One China” policy, acknowledging arguments on both sides of the Taiwan Strait that “there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China” in the first US-PRC Joint Communiqué in 1972. This “One China” policy stance was also followed by the Carter administration, which further stated in the US-PRC Normalization Communiqué that “the United States of America recognizes the government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China,” thus finalizing the successful negotiations to establish US-China diplomatic ties in 1979.

During the same period, Japan, based on the Nixon administration’s “One China” policy stance, conducted normalization talks and established diplomatic relations with the PRC in 1972, even before the completion of Sino-US diplomatic normalization. In fact, strongly stimulated by the “Nixon Shock,” Japan, under the strong political leadership of the Tanaka Cabinet, which was passionate about establishing diplomatic ties with the PRC, went a step further than the stance taken by the United States on the Taiwan issue, adopting a position of “fully understanding and respecting” the PRC’s “One China Principle,” despite facing strong resistance from political forces within the country that supported existing diplomatic ties with the ROC in Taiwan. Japan’s relatively positive response to the PRC position on the Taiwan issue not only accelerated the process of diplomatic normalization and the termination of formal diplomatic ties between Japan and the ROC in 1972 but also served as a practical model for the PRC to use in its efforts to expand diplomatic ties with other Western countries over the following decades.

From the PRC’s standpoint, the official understanding and acceptance of the PRC’s fundamental stance on the Taiwan issue by both the United States and Japan, demonstrated in diplomatic normalization negotiations, meant that the “One China” consensus among the three countries had been successfully formulated. Under this consensus, the PRC was recognized as the sole legal sovereign state representing China in the international community, while the ROC was de facto treated as a non-sovereign state, particularly regarding its status in international organizations such as the United Nations. Furthermore, the changes in the United States and Japan reflected a significant attitude and policy shift in the international community. The UN General Assembly had already passed Resolution 2758 in October 1971, before the Sino-US and Sino-Japanese normalization talks took place, to recognize the PRC as the representative of China, a move that also transferred the permanent seat at the UN Security Council from the ROC to the PRC. As a result, in contrast to the PRC, the ROC not only lost its permanent seat at the UN Security Council but also its status as a sovereign member state in international organizations. Although the ROC’s withdrawal from the United Nations was an autonomous action taken by the ROC government, the consequence worked against the ROC’s status in the international community simply because it helped fix a reality in which the ROC’s sovereign status was replaced by the PRC, if not disregarded by the member states of the United Nations.

It seemed that Japan and the United States, which tacitly acquiesced to the ROC’s withdrawal from the United Nations, assumed that the PRC’s exercise of its right to represent China was premised on a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue and would contribute to stability in the Taiwan Strait. This was, however, a major gap between their positions and China’s. From the PRC’s perspective, the ROC on Taiwan is a local government within China, and the Taiwan issue is an internal, not an international, issue. Therefore, whether the PRC uses force or not in resolving the Taiwan issue is purely a domestic matter and no one else’s business. In this context, the PRC has consistently argued throughout the past several decades that criticism of China’s Taiwan policy by other countries and demands that China abandon the use of force against Taiwan constitute interference in China’s internal affairs.

The Dilemma of Cross-Strait Relations

The formation of the “One China” consensus among the three countries was apparently not in the ROC’s interest. But the ROC leader, Chiang Kai-shek, was one of the strongest supporters of the “One China” concept, from a position opposite to the PRC’s argument. He also believed that there is only “One China” in the world, and that the ROC in Taiwan, not the PRC in Beijing, was the only legitimate government representing it. Therefore, when the PRC, representing China, entered the UN and took the permanent seat at the UN Security Council, Chiang decided to withdraw immediately from the organization based on his belief that the legitimate ROC was incompatible with the rebel PRC on the international stage. This policy stance was also followed by his successor, Chiang Ching-kuo, who implemented the “three no policy” of “no contact, no negotiation, and no compromise” toward the PRC until the late 1980s.

After gaining the upper hand in dealing with the Taiwan issue in the 1970s, the PRC shifted its policy slogans from “liberating Taiwan” to “facilitating contacts and exchanges” across the Taiwan Strait and adopted the “one country, two systems” formula aimed at peaceful unification with Taiwan in the 1980s. Coinciding with Taiwan’s democratization, cross-strait relations remarkably improved in the early 1990s when the two sides reached the “1992 Consensus” through two newly established semi-official organizations, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) of the PRC and the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) of the ROC. This remarkable achievement, which has been disputed within the ROC, however, turned out to be none other than the respective narratives of each side’s consistent positions on the “One China” concept. According to the explanation of the ruling Nationalist/Kuomintang (KMT) party, the content of the “1992 Consensus” was “one China, different interpretations.” But the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) denied the existence of the “1992 Consensus” per se. It was obvious that although both the PRC and the KMT tried hard to emphasize the “One China” concept, they could not reach a consensus on the content of “One China” between themselves. Consequently, the disputed “1992 Consensus” failed to provide a solid foundation for the sustainable improvement of cross-strait relations.
After the short-lived improvement in the early 1990s, cross-strait relations started to take a downward path, occasionally damaged by Taiwanese leaders’ remarks and actions such as the Two-States Theory of “special state-to-state relations” by President Lee Teng-hui (reinforced by Lee’s 1995 visit to the United States) and “One Country on Each Side” by Chen Shui-bian. It was not until President Ma Ying-jeou took office and stated that the ROC would resume talks with the PRC based on the “1992 Consensus” in 2008 that cross-strait relations once again moved in the direction of improvement.

During Ma’s eight-year presidency, the PRC apparently mitigated pressure on Taiwan and actively strengthened political, economic, cultural, and even military connections with Taiwan. The cross-strait relationship reached its peak when the two sides succeeded in holding a summit meeting in Singapore between PRC President Xi Jinping and Ma Ying-jeou in 2015. The meeting was the first between the political leaders of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and the first since the meeting between the two rival leaders, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, in Chongqing in 1945. Although the summit meeting was a great symbolic achievement in cross-strait relations, the outcome of the meeting was less substantial. The two sides once again emphasized the importance of the “1992 Consensus” but could not narrow the gap between them regarding what it means.

In 2016, when the DPP (which denied the “1992 Consensus”) replaced the KMT as the ruling party and its leader Tsai Ing-wen was elected as Taiwan’s new president, cross-strait relations started to lose their momentum and cooled down again. On January 2, 2019, Xi Jinping made a long speech concerning the Taiwan issue, calling for adherence to the “1992 Consensus” and joint efforts from both sides of the Taiwan Strait to realize peaceful unification through the “one country, two systems” formula, which had already been implemented in Hong Kong and Macau. Tsai Ing-wen responded the same day, stating that “the Beijing authorities’ definition of the ‘1992 Consensus’ is ‘one China’ and ‘one country, two systems,'” and that “we have never accepted the ‘1992 Consensus.'” Tsai further emphasized that Taiwanese opposition to the “one country, two systems” proposal is also a “Taiwan consensus.”

Taiwan’s continued rejection of the “1992 Consensus” drove the PRC to increase its political pressure, which had been temporarily halted during the Ma Ying-jeou administration. As a result, Taiwan lost ten diplomatic counterparts that had formally recognized the ROC, as they switched recognition to the PRC during Tsai’s eight-year presidency. Taiwan has also been excluded from participating in the Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2017. The PRC expected the KMT to return to power after Tsai’s administration, but was disappointed to see Tsai’s successor, Lai Ching-te, who took a tougher stance on Beijing than his predecessor, win the presidential election in 2024. Lai stated that the ROC and the PRC are not subordinate to each other and emphasized Taiwan’s sovereignty and its “commitment to resisting Chinese annexation.” In 2025, Lai announced plans to reinstate military trials for active-duty personnel and labeled China a “foreign hostile force” under the Anti-Infiltration Act. In response, the PRC intensified its military exercises surrounding Taiwan’s islands, and the military confrontation across the Taiwan Strait further escalated. It seems unlikely that the current cross-strait tensions will be eased or that relations between the PRC and the ROC will be repaired in the near future.

The Hollowing Out of the “One China” Policy

While cross-strait relations were often deadlocked and unable to find a suitable path for stable development, Taiwan’s relations with both the United States and Japan were constantly improving and getting even closer since the mid-1990s. From China’s standpoint, the issue of Taiwan has been a deep-rooted, thorny issue in its relations with both the United States and Japan since the beginning of their normalization talks. Concretely speaking, there were two major obstacles that have troubled Sino-US and Sino-Japanese relations occasionally, i.e., exchange visits by high-level politicians and officials between the US and Taiwan, and Japan and Taiwan, and US arms sales to Taiwan, which have also facilitated trilateral military cooperation among the US, Japan, and Taiwan in recent years.
In 1995, aiming to improve his chances of winning Taiwan’s first direct presidential election the following year, Lee Teng-hui made a visit to the United States, which sparked the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. In response to China’s retaliatory missile exercises, the US sent two carrier battle groups to the Taiwan area, which further heightened military tensions in the Taiwan Strait and caused severe damage to US-China relations. A similar event took place in 2022 when Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, visited Taiwan, making her the highest-ranking US official to visit Taiwan since former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s visit in 1997. This caused unprecedented political and military tensions between China and the United States.

Compared to the United States, Japan was more prudent about giving the green light to high-level exchange visits with Taiwan in the past several decades. This attitude prevented Lee Teng-hui from visiting Japan during his presidency. But in recent years, this attitude seems to be changing gradually. In 2022, after the assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, Taiwan’s Vice President Lai Ching-te was allowed to make a trip to Tokyo to attend the state funeral, becoming Taiwan’s most senior official to visit Japan in five decades. Exchange visits by politicians and even high-ranking officials are on the rise. In July 2025, Foreign Minister Lin Chia-Lung, after concluding a three-day visit to the US state of Texas in May, visited Japan, something unthinkable in previous decades. Less than two months later, Tsai Ing-wen also made a trip to Japan. The Chinese government protested both visits through diplomatic channels.

As high-level visits were increasing, security and military ties among the US, Japan, and Taiwan were also strengthening. Especially after Abe in 2021 issued a warning that “a Taiwan contingency is a contingency for Japan and also for the Japan-US alliance,” security and military cooperation among the US, Japan, and Taiwan has been upgraded. US continued and increased arms sales to Taiwan, have further increased the opportunity for trilateral military cooperation. All these practices reflected the unprecedented deterioration of US-China-Japan relations and consequently hollowed out the “One China” consensus.

While the State Department of the Trump administration still states that “the United States remains committed to our longstanding ‘one China’ policy,” it also emphasized, at the same time, that this “one China” policy “is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances,” and that “the United States is committed to preserving peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.” The stress on the Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances along with the Three Joint Communiques signals a clear attitude change toward the PRC. Furthermore, an unnamed spokesperson of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), Taiwan’s de facto US embassy, made a statement in response to a media inquiry on the 80th anniversary of World War II on September 13, 2025, that “Taiwan’s diplomatic status was not determined by any post-war international agreements,” and criticized China’s claims that the Cairo Declaration and Potsdam Declaration affirm that Taiwan was to be returned to China, by saying that “Beijing’s narratives are simply false, and none of these documents determined Taiwan’s ultimate political status.”⁴ Although there is no doubt that the AIT’s comments accurately conveyed the US government’s longtime stance on the matter, it seems obvious that the timing of making it public has much to do with its attitude and policy changes toward the PRC. Consequently, it indicates that the external environment for the implementation of the “One China” consensus has undergone a profound change, if not transformed completely.

Similar attitude changes toward the “One China” policy can be found in Japan as well. Although the Japanese government’s statement on the “One China” policy remains unchanged, policy-related comments and arguments from think tank researchers provide valuable references. Two commentaries on the “One China” policy written by former Japanese ambassadors appeared on the Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s website this year. One, shedding light on the historical attitudes and policy reversals in Europe concerning the “One China” perception, analyzes why China accelerated its pace toward unification with Taiwan.⁵ The other analyzed the historical background of the “One China” concept and argued that the international community should use the “One China” policy in reverse and shift its recognition from the PRC to the ROC if the PRC takes military action against Taiwan.⁶

As a matter of fact, the attitude and policy changes against China’s “One China Principle” were not limited to Japan and the United States. On September 12, 2024, the House of Representatives of the Netherlands adopted a motion that affirmed that UNGA Resolution 2758 does not establish the PRC’s sovereignty over Taiwan and expressed support for Taiwan’s participation in the UN and affiliated international bodies. And the House of Commons of the UK and Canada passed similar motions in November 2024. Meanwhile, stimulated by Taiwan’s active role during the COVID-19 pandemic and China’s wolf warrior diplomacy, a number of countries have also joined the move, calling for Taiwan’s return to the United Nations, and demonstrating a historical attitude reversal toward China and Taiwan.

Conclusion

From China’s standpoint, the issue of Taiwan is the core of China’s “core interests,” and China’s ultimate unification with Taiwan is an irreversible historical trend and will be inevitably achieved in the future. The present reality, however, suggests a more complex and difficult, if not opposite, trend against China’s longtime unaccomplished national unification and “great rejuvenation” dreams.

It is obvious that peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue depends on constant improvement in both the internal and external environments. Internally, cross-strait relations have remarkably improved economically and culturally but are deadlocked politically. Contested views on the “1992 Consensus” between China and Taiwan and between Taiwan’s ruling and opposition parties revealed both theoretical and practical limitations of the “One China” concept. Externally, the “One China” consensus among China, the US, and Japan provided China with a relatively favorable environment for its handling of the Taiwan issue in the past several decades, but the unprecedented deterioration of three-country relations indicates that the “One China” consensus is no longer in good shape, if not completely hollowed out. The fundamental reason behind this is that the US and Japan would never agree to the PRC’s absorption of Taiwan—from the 1970s to today—without policies that could persuade the people of Taiwan it was in their interest and also offer reassurance on security. All the wording since has reflected that reality, clearly or vaguely. Furthermore, as the PRC was seen as more threatening in Washington, Tokyo, and Taipei in recent years, the responses hardened. Now, the foremost issue is no longer legality or democracy but regional security.

Under such new circumstances, China’s national image as an imminent security threat to the Asia-Pacific region must be positively transformed or at least substantially mitigated, although expecting a return to the previous situation seems unrealistic, if not impossible. In order to create a peace-loving national image, China’s implementation of completely new policies for the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue seems indispensable.

(Jin Linbo is currently a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, Tokyo University)