As U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping convene in Washington for a high-stakes diplomatic summit this week, the Taiwan Strait—historically one of the world’s most volatile geopolitical flashpoints—has presented a surprisingly calm facade. For years, the maritime corridor separating Taiwan from the Chinese mainland has been a theater of relentless posturing. Chinese fighter jets routinely breach the median line, naval warships conduct aggressive maneuvers to the east of the island, and Beijing utilizes its coast guard to persistently harass vessels operating in the region.
Yet, beneath this ongoing friction, a notable shift has occurred. For nearly a year, Beijing has noticeably steered clear of the massive, large-scale military exercises that quickly became a standard instrument of coercion following former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s landmark visit to Taiwan in 2022.
This tactical pause stems largely from a renewed sense of optimism within the upper echelons of power in Beijing. Although the formal architecture of U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged, public remarks delivered by President Trump following his prior meeting with Xi in May severely rattled Taipei’s confidence in Washington’s long-term security guarantees. During that encounter, Trump remarked candidly, "I’m not looking to have somebody go independent. And, you know, we’re supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war. I’m not looking for that."
For years, analysts in Washington and across the broader Asia-Pacific region operated under the assumption that 2027 would serve as a critical watershed moment for Beijing’s Taiwan strategy. This timeline was largely driven by directives from Xi ordering the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to achieve operational readiness for a potential cross-strait military confrontation by that year. However, as 2027 rapidly approaches, current indicators suggest that Xi is not actively preparing to deploy lethal force in the immediate term. In fact, Xi’s willingness to carry out sweeping, systematic purges within his military high command indicates a leader who is not paralyzed by the threat of an imminent cross-strait crisis. For the present moment, Xi appears supremely confident in his ability to diplomatically and strategically manage both Washington and Taipei.
At the same time, Beijing remains unswervingly committed to organizing and modernizing its forces for a decisive conflict over Taiwan in the years ahead. Consequently, strategic planners are shifting their focus to a subsequent critical milestone: not 2027, when Xi is widely expected to commence an unprecedented fourth term in office, but 2028. That year will witness concurrent presidential elections in both the United States and Taiwan, events that will fundamentally dictate the future trajectory of cross-strait dynamics. In all likelihood, Xi is poised to find himself deeply frustrated by the electoral outcome in Taiwan, rendering the post-2028 landscape considerably more fraught than the current status quo. Consequently, the intervening two-year window represents a vital period for Washington to proactively collaborate with Taipei in preparing for the turbulence expected to materialize after 2028.
Rather than allowing doubts regarding its commitment to Taipei to metastasize, Washington should decisively lean into its multifaceted relationship with the island. In numerous respects, Taiwan has successfully repositioned itself as a model international partner. It has systematically reoriented its domestic economy away from China and toward the United States, all while significantly boosting domestic investments in its own defense capabilities. At a minimum, the Trump administration should move forward with approving the $14 billion arms package currently sitting pending on the president’s desk, even if it requires dividing the acquisition into smaller, manageable tranches to mitigate the risk of sharp escalations with Beijing.
While Beijing invariably voices strong opposition to U.S. arms sales, historical precedent demonstrates that Chinese leadership has consistently exhibited far greater agitation toward high-profile political gestures of support for Taiwan—such as Pelosi’s 2022 visit—than toward the bureaucratic mechanics of military hardware transfers. Furthermore, leaving essential arms sales in perpetual limbo carries severe long-term costs. By forgoing even this baseline measure of support, the administration risks becoming complicit in Beijing’s ongoing quest to establish a de facto veto over U.S. arms transfers and, by extension, over the entire cross-strait security architecture. As the post-2028 era approaches, the diplomatic cost of backing Taipei is virtually guaranteed to rise, particularly if an aging Xi concludes that strategic patience and further delays no longer serve his grand political ambitions.
SOONER OR LATER
Xi’s current optimism is largely predicated on the strategic hope that the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party will successfully recapture the presidency in 2028, thereby concluding a twelve-year run by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which Beijing routinely vilifies as a separatist political entity. Since the DPP assumed power in 2016, Beijing has maintained zero visible engagement with Taiwan’s ruling administration—a stark departure from Xi’s approach toward the preceding KMT government. Back in 2015, Xi achieved a historic milestone by becoming the first Chinese leader since Mao Zedong to shake hands with his Taiwanese counterpart, a diplomatic precedent he undoubtedly savored.
Yet, rather than integrating into what Xi and his state propagandists celebrate as a "new era" for China under his authoritarian rule, Taiwan has steadily drifted further away from the mainland. This persistent divergence has severely frustrated Xi’s overarching ambitions to initiate a formal political process aimed at annexing the island. Annexation—rather than a profoundly costly and potentially catastrophic military invasion—remains his ultimate strategic objective.
Beijing’s hopes experienced a resurgence in November 2025, when Cheng Li-wun unexpectedly secured the chair of the KMT. Cheng has consistently championed a substantially softer diplomatic line toward Beijing, emphasizing the shared cultural heritage of citizens on both sides of the strait and advocating for renewed cross-strait dialogue. In April 2026, she traveled to Beijing to meet directly with Xi, a rendezvous that occurred mere weeks before Xi hosted Trump. This meeting provided Xi with a convenient platform to portray his Taiwan policy as reasonable and conciliatory, masking his decade-long hard-line posture against Taiwan’s ruling party.
Xi’s willingness to roll out the red carpet for Cheng signals that she has rapidly become the central pillar of his long-term strategy for influencing Taiwan’s political status after 2028. However, political hope is not a viable strategy. Cheng’s prospects of securing the KMT’s presidential nomination in 2028—let alone emerging victorious in a general election—remain decidedly precarious. Her openly pro-Beijing policy views lack broad public appeal, even within her own political party. Cheng was ultimately a dark-horse candidate who captured the KMT chairmanship with a narrow margin of just over 50 percent of the internal vote, while public polling indicates that her party enjoys baseline support from only about 27 percent of the broader population.
Consequently, when 2028 arrives, Xi is highly likely to confront either a fourth consecutive DPP administration—led by current President Lai Ching-te—or a more moderate KMT leader who remains significantly more skeptical of Xi’s overtures than Cheng. Should Lai secure a historic second term alongside a renewed legislative majority in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan, it would effectively shatter Xi’s hopes that the KMT could serve as a viable pro-Beijing alternative.
Following Lai’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, Beijing sought solace in the reality that Lai secured his mandate through a mere plurality of the vote while simultaneously losing control of the legislature to the KMT opposition. Chinese state media and officials aggressively spun this split outcome as definitive proof that the majority of Taiwan’s electorate rejected Lai’s hardline platform on mainland relations. This narrative functioned not merely as external propaganda, but as an internal rationalization designed to mask the manifest failures of Beijing’s cross-strait policies.
Those political shortcomings will become infinitely harder to explain away in 2028, especially if voters treat another DPP victory as a sweeping public rebuke of the KMT’s conciliatory posture. At that juncture, Xi would find himself personally managing a stagnant, failed Taiwan policy that has yielded zero tangible political progress over more than a dozen years.
This looming political dilemma underscores the fundamental hollowness of the Chinese Communist Party’s overarching Taiwan strategy. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, previously attempted a softer economic and diplomatic outreach toward the KMT administration of Ma Ying-jeou, only for the initiative to backfire spectacularly. In 2014, massive waves of youth-led demonstrators spearheaded the Sunflower Movement, occupying Taiwan’s legislative chamber in fierce opposition to a proposed trade agreement designed to accelerate cross-strait economic integration.
When the DPP captured the presidency in 2016, Xi—who had already demonstrated an unwavering comfort with muscular national security policies—abruptly pivoted toward unadulterated coercion devoid of traditional diplomacy. He systematically severed all visible communication channels with Taiwan’s elected political leadership. The explicit objective of this campaign has been to convince the citizens of Taiwan that the prevailing status quo is entirely unsustainable, that annexation by the mainland is an absolute inevitability, and that they would be wise to passively submit to Beijing’s political terms.
THE COST OF COERCION
As Xi advances through his fourth term, he is anticipated to exhibit a growing sense of impatience regarding the unresolved Taiwan question; by the conclusion of that term, he will be approaching eighty years of age. Although he may currently harbor the conviction that time operates in his favor, that perception is unlikely to persist indefinitely. Should he find himself deeply frustrated by the results of Taiwan’s 2028 general election, he may feel compelled to escalate toward significantly more aggressive coercive measures.
Xi likely drew a calculated lesson from the diplomatic fallout following Pelosi’s 2022 visit: he discovered that he could push the envelope considerably far in threatening the island without triggering catastrophic blowback. China’s hyper-aggressive response in 2022 included firing PLA ballistic missiles directly over the island of Taiwan for the first time since the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in the mid-1990s, alongside the imposition of temporary maritime exclusion zones encircling the territory. Crucially, these actions failed to provoke a full-scale military crisis with the United States or result in tangible economic repercussions for Beijing. Furthermore, Xi anticipates consolidating even greater personal authority over his military high command following the CCP’s 21st Congress next year, where a sweeping leadership reshuffle is expected to conclude the purging of dozens of senior officers conducted throughout his third term.
Nevertheless, executing a strategy that compels both Taipei and Washington to seriously heed Beijing’s grievances would require moving well beyond the playbook deployed in 2022. This escalated approach could entail a sustained, highly punitive, and risky military pressure campaign—even in the absence of direct kinetic exchanges. Such tactics might involve intercepting foreign commercial vessels at sea, declaring multiple maritime zones near Taiwan permanently off-limits to international shipping traffic, and actively attempting to disrupt high-profile U.S. arms deliveries transported via commercial carriers. While falling short of a total naval blockade or military quarantine—scenarios long feared by defense planners in Washington—such measures would effectively communicate to the world that Taiwan remains connected to global commerce solely at Beijing’s discretion.
Yet, in any such aggressive scenario, the availability of viable diplomatic off-ramps and predictable endgames remains dangerously unclear. A Chinese decision to ratchet up military pressure might theoretically push a weary Taiwanese electorate toward a grudging, fatalistic acceptance of mainland rule; however, it is equally plausible that such heavy-handed tactics would backfire, triggering a powerful "rally-around-the-flag" effect across the island and supercharging anti-Beijing sentiment. A historical precedent for this dynamic occurred during the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, when Beijing’s brazen military threats ahead of Taiwan’s 2000 presidential election inadvertently galvanized public support and helped propel the DPP to its historic first presidential victory.
Naturally, Xi retains the option of pursuing more extreme measures, such as a formal naval quarantine, a total blockade, or the amphibious seizure of one of the smaller outlying islands currently governed by Taiwan that sit perilously close to the Chinese mainland. However, across fourteen years in supreme power, Xi has consistently demonstrated that he is neither impulsive nor overtly reckless in his foreign policy execution, preferring steady, incremental pressure over high-risk, decisive military gambles.
Pursuing these more aggressive options carries a high probability of failure, which would directly undermine the foundational premise that has animated his political career for decades: securing his historical legacy as the paramount leader who irrevocably set Taiwan on the path toward annexation. Furthermore, a blockade or quarantine would paradoxically play directly into existing strategic advantages held by the United States during a crisis, affording Washington valuable time to assemble an international coalition of allies willing to impose punishing economic costs on Beijing.
The temptation to resort to these violent alternatives could grow significantly more acute if a political figure skeptical of traditional U.S. alliances—often described as a "restrainer"—occupies the Oval Office following the 2028 U.S. presidential election. Such a commander-in-chief might openly question the strategic value of U.S. commitments to Taiwan or balk at the diplomatic effort required to marshal the international partnerships necessary for its defense.
Even if a more conventional political candidate prevails in 2028, Beijing will have drawn extensive lessons from contemporary conflicts, such as the war involving Iran, regarding the hard limits of American global power and Washington’s long-term political and material stamina. Critical stockpiles of advanced U.S. munitions will require years to successfully replenish, and ongoing conflicts have starkly exposed the operational vulnerabilities of overseas U.S. military bases and naval supply chains. These systemic logistical challenges are virtually guaranteed to persist into the subsequent presidential administration, severely constraining Washington’s capacity to respond decisively to Chinese aggression during a localized crisis.
A MODEL PARTNER
In the interim, both the United States and Taiwan possess a valuable strategic window to harden the island’s defenses while Xi waits to see what the 2028 elections ultimately produce. Under the current DPP leadership, Taiwan has decisively cast off years of complacency regarding the escalating threat emanating from the mainland. Taipei has markedly accelerated financial investments in its own national defense architecture while aggressively pivoting its national economy away from reliance on China—outpacing nearly all other global economies, including the United States, in this decoupling process. Taiwan has unmistakably demonstrated the political will, the economic wherewithal, and the burgeoning operational capacity required to meet the challenges confronting it.
Most notably, after decades of procuring conventional U.S. military systems ill-suited for asymmetric warfare against a superior adversary, Taiwan has finally embraced comprehensive defense reforms. In May, the legislative body passed a supplemental appropriations bill dedicating an additional $25 billion to military modernization. A primary challenge currently facing Taiwan’s armed forces lies not merely in acquiring advanced technological capabilities, but in effectively integrating them into the existing force structure.
In fact, the most fiercely contested political battleground in Taiwan this year centered precisely on defense reform, specifically legislative appropriations earmarked for expanding the domestic unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) manufacturing industry. Although the opposition KMT initially delayed the legislation, it ultimately acquiesced ahead of the island’s critical midterm elections in November. The mere fact that political parties are actively bickering over the specifics of defense expansion serves as a remarkably encouraging indicator of the government’s heightened seriousness regarding national security.
This comprehensive resilience-building program extends far beyond traditional military preparedness. The Taiwanese government is actively tackling the delicate and complex task of fostering "whole-of-society resilience." This requires carefully conditioning the general public to recognize and prepare for the omnipresent threat of a mainland invasion or maritime blockade without inducing widespread panic or psychological defeatism. While Taiwan’s private sector faces the same global economic temptations to source inexpensive Chinese manufactured goods, the government remains fiercely committed to actively scrubbing "red" technological components from sensitive supply chains tied to public sector procurement.
Concurrently, Taiwan’s economy is expanding at an extraordinary pace, generating the necessary fiscal space to robustly fund ongoing military modernization efforts in the coming years. Furthermore, the island has achieved a dramatic reduction in its economic dependence on Beijing. Whereas in 2010 more than 80 percent of Taiwan’s outbound foreign direct investment was directed toward mainland China, today that figure has plummeted to less than ten percent.
Taiwan’s contemporary economic growth is propelled primarily by its world-class semiconductor manufacturing sector, which has capitalized heavily on the global artificial intelligence boom. With a total population of just 23 million, Taiwan has ascended to become the fourth-largest trading partner of the United States. Beyond merely exporting goods, leading Taiwanese technology firms have pledged hundreds of billions of dollars in direct investments within the U.S. domestic economy.
In February, Taiwan became one of the inaugural nations to finalize a comprehensive bilateral trade agreement with the Trump administration. Unlike many traditional American trading partners, Taiwan emerged genuinely satisfied with the final framework, as it successfully narrows the competitive tariff gap between Taiwanese exports and those originating from regional competitors such as Japan and South Korea.
NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT
Regrettably, rather than capitalizing on these deepening bilateral economic bonds and Taipei’s newfound seriousness regarding defense, Washington risks undermining them. While structural geopolitical forces strongly favor a closer bilateral partnership, diplomatic execution—historically the most straightforward component of statecraft—has degenerated into the weakest pillar of U.S. policy. President Trump’s visit to Beijing in May generated profound anxiety in Taipei, stoking lingering fears that the American leader might attempt a grand geopolitical bargain that sacrifices Taiwan’s core interests.
Although Trump largely adhered to standard talking points for the majority of his trip, he stumbled during a subsequent interview with Fox News. By openly describing arms sales as a flexible bargaining chip to be leveraged in negotiations with Beijing, Trump disrupted decades of established precedent wherein successive American presidents categorically refused to subject arms transfers to Chinese veto or consultation. While senior U.S. officials scrambled in the ensuing days and weeks to reiterate that official U.S. policy toward Taiwan remained fundamentally unchanged, the rhetorical damage had already been inflicted.
For seasoned observers of cross-strait diplomacy, the greater source of alarm stemmed not from the president’s public rhetoric, but from his policy inertia—specifically, his hesitation to greenlight the pending $14 billion arms package. From a pragmatic standpoint, structural deficiencies within the U.S. defense industrial base and bureaucratic procurement pipeline mean that the advanced capabilities included in that package would not physically arrive on the island prior to the conclusion of Trump’s current term, explaining his lukewarm enthusiasm. Moreover, once the military hardware eventually reaches Taiwan, local forces will require substantial time to properly assimilate those capabilities to employ them with maximum battlefield effectiveness.
However, these lengthy procurement lead times only underscore the urgent necessity for the administration to act decisively right now. Washington currently enjoys a willing, highly motivated partner in Taipei possessing the fiscal capacity to execute these vital purchases, operating within a temporal window where Xi is deliberately holding off on major escalations to see how the 2028 elections unfold. A subsequent U.S. presidential administration may lack an equally favorable geopolitical opportunity to enhance Taiwan’s self-defense readiness. Ultimately, Taiwan will require every ounce of strategic capacity it can muster to navigate the challenges posed by an aging and potentially volatile Xi Jinping in the years ahead.
Should the opposition KMT capture the presidency in 2028, the incoming administration may lack the DPP’s unwavering enthusiasm for deep defense cooperation with Washington. Simultaneously, Xi is currently navigating a grueling, high-stakes overhaul of his military high command—a restructuring that, once fully completed, could fundamentally alter Beijing’s strategic calculus regarding the use of force.
Consequently, the fragile de facto understanding currently existing between Washington and Beijing provides a fleeting diplomatic window of opportunity. This breathing space allows the United States to proactively bolster Taiwan’s defenses, seizing the moment before the political landscape shifts and a new crisis inevitably materializes in the Taiwan Strait.
