Jennifer Kavanagh and Stephen Wertheim’s reply to my recent op-ed criticizing their Foreign Affairs polemic “The Taiwan Fixation” raises important points regarding Taiwan’s need to strengthen its self-defense. Unfortunately, their riposte distorts my own positions as well as political realities in both Taiwan and China.

The death of Pope Francis has brought renewed attention to Taiwan’s diplomatic relationship with the Holy See, a quasi-state entity whose formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan are a historical artifact causing needless distraction and indignity for the government.

在《外交事務》雜誌刊登的一篇令人憂心的文章〈台灣執念〉（The Taiwan Fixation）中，作者Jennifer Kavanagh和Stephen Wertheim忽略了中國軍事戰略的關鍵考量，並錯誤詮釋美國對台政策的歷史，將一個擁有2,300萬人民的國家命運，簡化為美中競爭中的一顆棋子。

In an alarming article in Foreign Affairs, The Taiwan Fixation, Jennifer Kavanagh and Stephen Wertheim miss key considerations of Chinese military strategy, while misrepresenting the history of US policy towards Taiwan, reducing the fate of a country of 23 million souls to a mere pawn in US-China competition. 

In February, The Economist published the results of a stunning survey of China’s diplomatic aggression against Taiwan around the world. The results should serve as a wakeup call to Taipei: as of 2025, a decisive majority of internationally recognized sovereign states accept China’s fiction that Taiwan is a part of its territory.

I expected my article (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,”) to create a stir and wrote it to spark a debate over how Taiwan should respond to the affront on its sovereignty.

Two weeks ago, Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) raised hackles in Taiwan by posting to her 2.6 million Instagram followers that she was visiting “Taipei, China.”

美國川普總統近期威脅要對台灣半導體徵收關稅。這讓許多政府和產業界人士的新年假期被迫中斷，匆匆應對可能的危機。這場恐慌，反映出台灣政府在與川普政府互動時的策略不足，以及民進黨過度依賴美國外交政策建制派的弊病。

Taiwan grapples with President Trump's threats to impose tariffs on its semiconductors, revealing a lack of strategic preparedness.

As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries.

Taiwan’s victory in the World Baseball Softball Confederation Premier12 championship is an historic achievement. Yet once again this achievement is marred by the indignity of the imposed moniker “Chinese Taipei.”

As the world ponders what US president-elect Donald Trump’s second term would mean for relations with the world’s largest economy and most powerful military, Taiwan has unique considerations and anxieties about the next four years as it seeks to maintain a stable partnership with its most critical ally.

美國總統大選不到兩週，有學者發現共和黨候選人川普覺得靠關稅就能嚇阻北京侵台，民主黨候選人賀錦麗則把優先擺在伊朗等次要對手上，兩人恐都錯讀台海情勢。

The former president thinks tariffs will deter China, and the vice president’s primary focus is on a less-threatening adversary.

Depending on how they are pronounced, Bao Li and Qing Bao’s names have unsettling meanings.

The attendance of 183 international dignitaries at the Double Ten National Day celebration was an important public measure to affirm Taiwan’s sovereignty and international support.

The recent indictment of a former New York State official, Linda Sun (孫雯), for allegedly using her official position to benefit the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has shed light on the vulnerability of US state governments to foreign influence.

In Le Monde, sinologist Marie Holzman accuses the Bhutanese-Taiwanese film The Monk and the Gun of being a "Chinese attack on democracy." Directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji, the film humorously explores Bhutan's 2006 democratization. Is this critique fair, or is the film’s subtle commentary on democracy being misinterpreted?

As the world’s nations sailed the River Seine during the opening ceremony for the Olympics last month, Taiwan once again suffered the enduring humiliation of being the sole country forced to sail under a fictitious name and flag.

European states should aid a Taiwanese bid to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), a symbolic statement of values as well as a substantive move to integrate Taiwan into the global community and preserve peace in the Indo-Pacific.

Much fuss has been made this week over this year’s Republican National Committee (RNC) policy platform’s failure to include any mention of Taiwan, for the first time in four decades.

In recent months, high-level discussions in Taiwan have raised the prospect of the nation joining the International Criminal Court (ICC), one of the many institutional pillars of the international rules-based order that still excludes Taiwan.

Alone of all the nations and territories competing in the Olympics, Taiwan is forced to compete under a nonsensical moniker that neither refers to any real geographic or political reality, nor accurately reflects the identity of its team. Rather, Taiwan competes under “Chinese Taipei,” an imperial Chinese construction imposed on the people of Taiwan without consultation.

Taiwan will once again be forced to compete in the Olympics this summer under a nonsensical moniker that neither refers to any political reality nor the identity of its team.

While there is plenty of daylight between the DPP and KMT, the two parties have converged on remarkably similar positions with regards to national sovereignty.