MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: In November, President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met at the APEC summit. One of the top agenda items was Taiwan, a democratically elected island that China claims as its own. Xi called the island of 24 million people the most important, most sensitive issue driving U.S.-China tensions. Well, the person who handles U.S. policy on Taiwan on a daily basis is Sandra Oudkirk. Our correspondent Emily Feng met her in Taipei.EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Sandra Oudkirk directs the American Institute in Taiwan – or AIT – in practice, the U.S.’s embassy here in all but name.SANDRA OUDKIRK: We are not an embassy. We do not travel with diplomatic passports.FENG: That’s because the U.S. does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country. It’s one of the many diplomatic workarounds Oudkirk deals with daily – managing the U.S. policy on Taiwan and on China, just next door. And it’s precisely because of this delicate balance that she applauds the dialogue between the U.S. and China at the APEC summit.OUDKIRK: Communication reduces miscalculations, and so I think that’s important not just for Taiwan, but for the whole region and really for the whole world.FENG: But Oudkirk is firm in what the U.S. is committed to in helping Taiwan defend itself and will not budge on. After Xi met with Biden, China’s foreign ministry asked the U.S. to stop selling arms to Taiwan and to support Beijing in peacefully taking control of the island – something the U.S. says Taiwan should decide for itself.OUDKIRK: Part of that approach to Taiwan is the agreement that the United States will sell defensive weapons to Taiwan sort of linked to the level of threat that Taiwan faces. So that’s a commitment that the United States has made that isn’t going to change.FENG: In fact, the Biden administration is looking to give more military help to Taiwan as part of a proposed military assistance bill in Congress in an effort to deter a potential invasion from China.OUDKIRK: Effective deterrence is a situation where the adversary looks at their target every day, every year, every three years, and says it’s not worth it.FENG: Despite months of open speculation from both U.S. and Taiwan officials, there’s been a recent shift in tone, and both now say a Chinese invasion is not likely to happen anytime soon.OUDKIRK: There’s an important distinction between making plans and training troops and actually getting ready to do something. And the United States is confident that there is no imminent threat of invasion for Taiwan.FENG: Oudkirk, however, is concerned about narratives being planted on Taiwan social media platforms through doctored images and false claims in the run-up to a Taiwanese January election. It’s not clear whether a state actor such as China is behind these narratives, but claims like this one – that the U.S. is deliberately weakening Taiwan’s semiconductor companies – have been proliferating.OUDKIRK: The way to push back against disinformation and sort of deliberate information manipulation is to talk and to engage and to be approachable and also to work on things like media literacy.FENG: But these narratives seem to be taking a toll on Taiwanese confidence in the U.S. A November poll by the prominent research institution Academia Sinica in Taipei found only a third of Taiwanese citizens believe the U.S. to be a stable partner – down 11% from just two years ago. All this is happening as Taiwan enters its last full month of campaigning before its presidential election in January- one that will influence Taiwan’s policy with China and with the U.S.Emily Feng, NPR News, Taipei, Taiwan.
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