Water Wars: Donald Trump Stirs Pot in South China Sea

Dec 9, 2016 | Chris Mirasola
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President-elect Donald Trump took control of the news cycle this week by seeming to adopt a hard line on US-China relations. First, he accepted a phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen last Friday, breaking decades of diplomatic protocol. Reports later in the week indicated that Bob Dole, prior Republican presidential nominee and key Trump ally, set up the call. Two days after significant blowback from US media stemming from the call, Trump wrote a series of tweets highly critical of China. He rhetorically queried whether China “ask[ed] us if it was OK to devalue their currency . . . , heavily tax  our products going into their country . . . or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don’t think so!” While many corners of the US foreign policy establishment criticized both diplomatic moves, there has been a diversity of reactions in Taipei and Beijing.