TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE: After controversial phone call with Taiwan’s leader, Donald Trump was ‘urged to show restraint’ SCMP 20190415

【Comment】

The news has to be confirmed: a hardliner advisor as Pillsbury is told his President to show constraint and the President accepted.

Note that SCMP is a media agency of Alibaba.

It is quite unbelievable that Michael Pillsbury gave such advise, given he was the author of the Vice President’s famous remark on 4th October 2018.

Something is cooking if this is true.  But the news, from Beijing’s viewpoint,  is “too good to be true,” for it reverses almost all points raised by Pillsbury, which smells like a fake one.

美副總統彭斯演說全文翻譯    中央社 20181008

Remarks by Vice President Pence on the Administration’s Policy Toward China    白宮 20181004

After controversial phone call with Taiwan’s leader, Donald Trump was ‘urged to show restraint’    SCMP 20190415

• White House adviser Michael Pillsbury says he was criticised for his suggestions by China hawks
• Trump ‘probably has closer relations with a Chinese leader than any other US president’

White House adviser Michael Pillsbury says even before Donald Trump took office, he told the US president-elect to show restraint in managing America’s relations with China – including no more phone calls with Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen.

And Trump took his advice, as a way to build constructive ties with the country and a personal relationship with President Xi Jinping, Pillsbury said in an interview with the South China Morning Post.

Trump abandoned decades of protocol on December 2, 2016 – about a month before he took office – by taking a phone call from Tsai congratulating him on winning the presidency.  It was the first such conversation between a US president or president-elect and a Taiwanese leader since 1979, when Washington switched formal diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing.

After the controversial call, Trump said in a tweet: “Interesting how the US sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.”

The call infuriated Beijing, which warned that the foundation of China-US relations would be jeopardised if the one-China policy was not respected.

Pillsbury called it a “mistake” to accept the call, saying at the time he was the only China expert in the Trump transition team advising against further phone conversations with Tsai.

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“One of my suggestions was no more phone talks with Tsai,” Pillsbury said.  “At that time I received a lot of criticism from the hawkish camp in the US – they said you should talk to Tsai once a month, and invite Tsai to the US.”

Two months later, the White House said Trump had agreed, at Xi’s request, to honour the United States’ one-China policy, under which the US “acknowledges” Beijing’s stance but takes no position on Taiwan’s sovereignty.

Pillsbury said Trump had taken a different approach to China relations than his predecessors, who “all repeat, like robots, the exact words of the three communiqués”.

He was referring to three joint statements made by the US and China in 1972, 1979 and 1982, which have served as the basis of bilateral ties.

Under the US’ one-China policy, which was first stated in the Shanghai communiqué of 1972, “The United States acknowledges that Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.  The United States does not challenge that position.”

According to Pillsbury, Trump said he would abide by the one-China policy not because previous presidents had done so, but because “it was a request from his friend, President Xi”.

“In other words, he’s negotiating with President Xi,” Pillsbury said.  “He probably has closer relations with a Chinese leader than any other [US] president.

“There is some kind of admiration Trump has for Xi,” he said, drawing “a little bit of parallel” between the two leaders who were both pushing “patriotic” movements – Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and Xi’s Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.

US-China tensions could ignite over Taiwan, American former officials warn.

Although there have been no more phone conversations between Trump and Tsai, Washington has taken steps to elevate US relations with Taiwan, including encouraging more exchanges between senior officials from the two sides.

Last month, Brent Christensen, director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto US embassy in Taipei, announced that the US and Taiwan had agreed to set up an annual dialogue, the Indo-Pacific Democratic Governance Consultations.

Pillsbury earlier said he “strongly supports” the new dialogue mechanism, and that it did not breach the US’ one-China policy.

“It’s understood in China as a provocation and undermining the one-China principle as they call it.  But from the American point of view, it is consistent with what President Trump calls our one-China policy,” he said.

In addition to cautioning against further phone contact with Tsai, Pillsbury said he also advised Trump not to sell F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan, not to meet exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, and for the US Navy to only carry out “innocent passage” in the South China Sea.