Taiwan buys time while the great powers haggle over its head

Taiwan spent the window paying for protection it no longer fully controls. A February trade deal with the United States cut its tariff exposure in exchange for a pledged 250 billion dollars of investment in American chip, energy, and AI projects, plus another 250 billion in credit guarantees for smaller Taiwanese firms moving south and east. By April, the defense ministry had signed six arms agreements worth 6.6 billion dollars, including HIMARS launchers and M109A7 howitzers, with Washington granting deferred payment terms after the opposition-controlled legislature refused to fund the full package up front. A larger 14 billion dollar interceptor missile sale was reportedly waiting on President Donald Trump's signature, held back until after his Beijing trip.

That trip was the real story. In mid-May, Trump met Xi Jinping in Beijing and told Fox News afterward that he wanted Taiwan to "stay the way it is," a formulation that satisfied no one in Taipei. The presidential office responded that China remains the sole destabilizing factor in the strait, but the calibration was clear: the United States and China were now negotiating over Taiwan's status without Taiwan in the room. Days earlier, Beijing had hosted Cheng Li-wun, the new Kuomintang chair, for the first sitting KMT leader's audience with Xi in nearly a decade. Cheng called it deterrence through dialogue and pledged to reopen cross-strait tourism if her party retakes power in 2028.

Lai answered with motion. In early May, after Seychelles, Mauritius, and Madagascar quietly revoked overflight permits for his charter, he chartered a foreign aircraft and landed in Eswatini anyway, signing a customs accord with King Mswati III on the only African ally Taiwan has left. Cardinal Peter Turkson arrived in Hualien the same week for the Tzu Chi foundation's anniversary, the highest-ranking Vatican visit in years. A 160-member Czech delegation led by Chamber Speaker Marketa Pekarova Adamova addressed Taiwan's legislature in late March, even as Prime Minister Andrej Babis refused a government plane to the Senate's own Taiwan-bound delegation a month later.

The People's Liberation Army kept up Air Defense Identification Zone flights, 169 in April, but the tempo was well below 2025 levels, a signal that Beijing was running the influence campaign through politicians and airspace clearances rather than jet flybys while the Trump channel was open. At home, the legislature finally passed a 25 billion dollar supplementary defense budget on May 8, roughly two-thirds of what Lai had requested.