The United States remains Taiwan\u2019s main international backer and arms supplier despite lack of formal diplomatic ties.<\/p>\n
Published On 9 Sep 20269 Sep 2026<\/p>\n
The top US diplomat in Taipei has warned that any conflict across the Taiwan Strait would have a bigger impact on the global economy than World War II, just weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to travel to Washington.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a defence forum in Taipei on Wednesday, Raymond Greene, director of the American Institute in Taiwan, said there was no topic more timely or important than how to secure peace in the Taiwan Strait, adding that the upcoming US-China summit is an opportunity to avoid miscalculations.<\/p>\n
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Xi Jinping is expected to travel to the United States later this month to meet with President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe upcoming US-China summit is an opportunity to further advance a relationship of strategic stability, on the basis of fairness and reciprocity, that can avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations,\u201d Greene added.<\/p>\n
While the US, like most countries, has no formal diplomatic relations with Chinese-claimed Taiwan, it is the democratically governed island\u2019s most important international backer and arms supplier.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeyond the human toll, any conflict across the Taiwan Strait would have a bigger impact on the global economy than the second world war,\u201d Greene said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States under the Trump administration has made preserving peace in the Indo-Pacific one of its top priorities,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
That includes \u201cvigorous\u201d diplomacy, especially at the highest levels, he said.<\/p>\n
Greene said that the US was also reinforcing its presence and partnerships in the Asia Pacific to maintain a \u201cfavourable regional balance of power\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThird, and especially relevant to today\u2019s discussion, we are supporting Taiwan\u2019s work to enhance its ability to defend itself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te\u2019s administration has made stepped-up defence spending and military modernisation priorities, citing the threat level from China.<\/p>\n
The government, which rejects Beijing\u2019s claims to the island, has budgeted defence spending for next year to exceed 1 trillion Taiwan dollars ($31.76bn) for the first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States remains Taiwan\u2019s main international backer and arms supplier despite lack of formal diplomatic ties. Published…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3995,1204,94188,4868,144,1127,12,101,4379,3,111,3998,21,19,22,20,25,1209,24],"class_list":["post-841429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-asia","tag-asia-pacific","tag-border-disputes","tag-business-and-economy","tag-china","tag-conflict","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-military","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-taiwan","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-canada","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}