Two Chinas Policy

Bob Dole Worked Behind the Scenes on Trump-Taiwan Call
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and ERIC LIPTON

Former Senator Bob Dole, shown in November 2015, has been working as a lobbyist with the Washington law firm Alston & Bird. 

WASHINGTON — Former Senator Bob Dole, acting as a foreign agent for the government of Taiwan, worked behind the scenes over the past six months to establish high-level contact between Taiwanese officials and President Donald J. Trump’s staff, an outreach effort that culminated last week in an unorthodox telephone call between Mr. Trump and Taiwan’s president.
Mr. Dole, a lobbyist with the Washington law firm Alston & Bird, coordinated with Mr. Trump’s campaign and the transition team to set up a series of meetings between Mr. Trump’s advisers and officials in Taiwan, according to disclosure documents filed last week with the Justice Department. Mr. Dole also assisted in successful efforts by Taiwan to include language favorable to it in the Republican Party platform, according to the documents.
Mr. Dole’s firm received $140,000 from May to October for the work, the forms said.
The disclosures suggest that President Trump’s decision to take a call from the president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, was less a ham-handed diplomatic move and more the result of a well-orchestrated plan by Taiwan to use the election of a new president to deepen its relationship with the United States — with an assist from a seasoned lobbyist well versed in the machinery of Washington.
“They’re very optimistic,” Mr. Dole said of the Taiwanese in an interview on Tuesday. 

“They see a new president, a Republican, and they’d like to develop a closer relationship.”

The United States’ One China policy is nearly four decades old, Mr. Dole said, referring to the policy established in 1979 that denies Taiwan official diplomatic recognition but maintains close contacts, promoting Taiwan’s democracy and selling it advanced military equipment.

The phone call between Mr. Trump and Ms. Tsai was a striking break from nearly four decades of diplomatic practice and threatened to precipitate a major rift with China, which admonished Mr. Trump in a front-page editorial in the overseas edition of People’s Daily.
The disclosure documents were submitted before the call took place and made no mention of it. 

But Mr. Dole, 93, a former Senate majority leader from Kansas, said he had worked with transition officials to facilitate the conversation.
“It’s fair to say that we had some influence,” he said. 

“When you represent a client and they make requests, you’re supposed to respond.”
Officials on Mr. Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment.
The documents suggest that Mr. Dole helped the government of Taiwan establish early access to Mr. Trump’s inner circle during the campaign, when Mr. Dole worked to involve Mr. Trump’s aides in a United States delegation to Taiwan and to facilitate a Taiwanese delegation to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July.
The effort has continued in the weeks since the election, with Mr. Dole on Tuesday saying he was trying to fulfill a request from a special envoy from Taiwan who was visiting Washington to see Reince Priebus, tapped by Mr. Trump to be White House chief of staff, and Newt Gingrich, who is close to the president. (The Priebus meeting, Mr. Dole said, would most likely have to wait until Mr. Trump is inaugurated.)
Mr. Dole, the only former Republican presidential nominee to endorse Mr. Trump, arranged a meeting between Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, whom Mr. Trump has chosen to be his attorney general, and Stanley Kao, Taiwan’s envoy to the United States, and convened a meeting between Taiwanese officials and Mr. Trump’s transition team, the documents say.
Mr. Dole, who said he first took an interest in Taiwan as a senator when Congress was considering the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act that established the current policy, has lobbied for the Taiwanese government for nearly two decades. 

In a letter in January, Mr. Dole laid out the terms of his agreement to represent the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, Taiwan’s unofficial embassy, including a $25,000 monthly retainer.
That letter and the document detailing Mr. Dole’s work for the Taiwanese were filed at the Justice Department, which requires foreign agents to register and detail their efforts at influencing the United States government.
Among his duties, the letter said, were helping Taiwan achieve its “military goals” and obtain membership in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-nation trade deal that Mr. Trump has promised to withdraw from. 

Mr. Dole was also to arrange for Taiwanese officials to meet with members of Congress from both parties and arrange access to Republican presidential contenders and to the party’s national convention.
The government of Taiwan has retained a powerful bipartisan constellation of former members of Congress to promote its interests in Washington. 

Richard A. Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat and former House majority leader, also signed a $25,000-a-month contract to represent the Taipei office this year, as did Thomas A. Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, a former Senate majority leader, in 2015.
Mr. Trump’s transition team has sent mixed messages about the call with Ms. Tsai, whether it was meant as a mere gesture of good will or a provocation aimed at drawing Taiwan closer to the United States as a way of challenging China, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province.
Vice President Mike Pence suggested in the days after the call that Mr. Trump had merely been affording a courtesy to another “democratically elected leader.” 

But in a series of Twitter posts on Sunday, Mr. Trump suggested a more confrontational motive, criticizing China for unfair trade practices and aggressive military moves.
“Did China ask us if it was OK” to take such actions, Mr. Trump asked rhetorically, appearing to counter suggestions that the United States must ask Beijing’s permission to communicate with Taiwan.
Several senior advisers to Mr. Trump have long advocated stronger United States support for Taiwan, arguing that it would help to counterbalance Beijing’s influence. 

Alexander Grey and Peter Navarro, Trump transition advisers, wrote an article last month in Foreign Policy branding the Obama administration’s treatment of Taiwan “egregious.”
Over the weekend, Taiwan’s official Central News Agency said that Edward J. Feulner, a member of Mr. Trump’s transition team and the former president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that supports stronger ties with Taiwan, had played a crucial role in bringing about the call with Mr. Trump. 

Mr. Feulner met with Ms. Tsai in Taiwan in October.
Even before the phone call, Taiwan had succeeded in accomplishing important goals with Mr. Trump’s team. 

At their convention in Cleveland in July, Republicans adopted a platform that for the first time enshrined the “six assurances” to Taiwan made by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, including that the United States would not set a date for ending arms sales to the Taiwanese.

Two Chinas Policy

New China Policy: Trump’s Taiwan phone call was long planned

By Anne Gearan, Philip Rucker and Simon Denyer

Friday's telephone call between President Donald Trump and President of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen signals U.S. New China Policy

Donald Trump’s protocol-breaking telephone call with Taiwan’s leader was an intentionally provocative move that establishes the incoming president as a break with the past, according to interviews with people involved in the planning.
The historic communication — the first between leaders of the United States and Taiwan since 1979 — was the product of months of quiet preparations and deliberations among Trump’s advisers about a new strategy for engagement with Taiwan that began even before he became the Republican presidential nominee, according to people involved in or briefed on the talks.
The call also reflects the views of advisers urging Trump to take a tough opening line with China, said others familiar with the months of discussion about Taiwan and China.
Trump and his advisers have sought to publicly portray the call the president took from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen ­on Friday as a routine congratulatory call.
Trump noted on Twitter that she placed the call.
“He took the call, accepted her congratulations and good wishes and it was precisely that,” Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
That glosses over the extensive and turbulent history of U.S. relations with Taiwan and the political importance the island and its democracy hold for many Republican foreign policy specialists.
Pro-China critics portrayed the move as the thoughtless blundering of a foreign policy novice, but experts said it was calculated to signal a new, robust approach to relations with China.
China reacted sternly to the Taiwan call, suggesting that it shows Trump’s inexperience.
Trump sent two Twitter messages Sunday that echoed his campaign-stump blasts against China.
“Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into their country (the U.S. doesn’t tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea?” he asked.
“I don’t think so!”
The United States does impose a tiny tax on Chinese goods — 2.9 percent for non-farm goods and 2.5 percent for agricultural products.
GOP’s most ardent Taiwan proponents are playing active roles in Trump’s transition team, and others in the conservative foreign policy community see a historic opportunity to reset relations with Taiwan and reposition it as a strategic ally in East Asia.
Several leading members of Trump’s transition team are considered friendly toward Taiwan, including incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus.
Indeed, advisers explicitly warned last month that relations with China were in for a shake-up.
In an article for Foreign Policy magazine titled “Donald Trump’s Peace Through Strength Vision for the Asia-Pacific,” Peter Navarro and Alexander Gray described Taiwan as a “beacon of democracy in Asia” and complained that its treatment by the Obama administration was “egregious.”
The article, flagged to China experts as a significant policy blueprint, described Taiwan as “the most militarily vulnerable U.S. partner anywhere in the world” and called for a comprehensive arms deal to help it defend itself against China.
Friday’s phone call does look like the first sign of a recalibration by a future Trump administration, experts say.
It was planned weeks ahead by staffers and Taiwan specialists on both sides, according to people familiar with the plans.
Immediately after Trump won the Nov. 8 election, his staffers compiled a list of foreign leaders with whom to arrange calls.
“Very early on, Taiwan was on that list,” said Stephen Yates, a national security official during the presidency of George W. Bush and an expert on China and Taiwan.
“Once the call was scheduled, I was told that there was a briefing for President Trump. They knew that there would be reaction and potential blowback.”
Alex Huang, a spokesman for Tsai, told the Reuters news agency, “Of course both sides agreed ahead of time before making contact.”
Tsai’s office said she had told Trump during the phone call that she hoped the United States “would continue to support more opportunities for Taiwan to participate in international issues.”
Tsai will have sympathetic ears in the White House.
Priebus is reported to have visited Taiwan with a Republican delegation in 2011 and in October 2015, meeting Tsai before she was elected president.
Taiwan Foreign Minister David Lee called him a friend of Taiwan and said his appointment as Trump’s chief of staff was “good news” for the island, according to local news media.
Edward J. Feulner, a longtime former president of the Heritage Foundation, has for decades cultivated extensive ties with Taiwan and is serving as an adviser to Trump’s transition team.
At the Republican National Convention in July, Trump’s allies inserted a little-noticed phrase into the party’s platform reaffirming support for six key assurances to Taiwan made by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 — a priority for the Taiwan government.
Also written into the 2016 platform was tougher language about China than had been in the party’s platform in its previous iteration four years ago.
“We salute the people of Taiwan, with whom we share the values of democracy, human rights, a free market economy, and the rule of law,” the platform said, adding that the current documents governing U.S.-Taiwan relations should stand but adding, “China’s behavior has negated the optimistic language of our last platform concerning our future relations with China.”
Yates, who helped write that portion of the platform, said Trump made clear at the time that he wanted to recalibrate relationships around the world and that the U.S. posture toward China was “a personal priority.”
About the same time, Navarro, one of Trump’s top economic and Asia advisers, penned an op-ed saying that the United States must not “dump Taiwan” and needs a comprehensive strategy to bolster what he termed “a beacon of democracy.”
The president-elect’s advisers have said the communication does not signify any formal shift in long-standing U.S. relations with Taiwan, even as they acknowledge that the decision to break with nearly 40 years of U.S. diplomatic practice was a calculated choice.
“Of course all head-of-state calls are well planned,” said Richard Grenell, a former State Department official who has advised the Trump transition effort.
Grenell and others noted that the call came about two weeks after Trump had spoken with Xi Jinping.
“There was no policy discussion, and everyone involved is well aware of the ‘One China’ policy,” Grenell said, referring to the Nixon-era shift that established formal direct ties between Washington and Beijing.
The United States maintains a military relationship with Taiwan, which Beijing considers a province, but closed its embassy there in 1979.
Republican administrations since then have emphasized Taiwan’s democracy and flirted with the idea of a shift in policy, but none have held public discussions with a Taiwanese leader.
“There are a lot of things that previous Republican presidents, and Democratic presidents, would do that Donald Trump won’t do,” Grenell said.
“He’s a man that understands that typical Washington rules are not always best for our foreign policy.”
During the campaign, Trump’s fiery rhetoric against China resonated with his supporters, especially those in the economically beleaguered Rust Belt states where he registered unexpected wins.
Trump accused China of “raping” the United States by stealing trade secrets, manipulating its currency and subsidizing its industries. 
He vowed to institute tough new policies designed to crack down on the Chinese and extract concessions, such as by imposing higher tariffs on goods manufactured there.
By angering the Chinese government with his talk with Tsai, Trump showed his supporters in the United States that he would follow through with his promise to get tough on China, some observers said.
“He campaigned on an ‘America first’ platform,” GOP pollster Frank Luntz said.
“Calls like this may upset the diplomats, but they communicate to Americans that he’s not going to play by the same rules and isn’t just talking differently but will act differently.”
Walter Lohman, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, said the call with Tsai “was deliberate. It was not an accident. Obviously he made a conscious decision to have the call arranged. She called him, but there was an agreement for it.”
Gordon Chang, an Asia expert and author of “ The Coming Collapse of China ,” said Trump’s tweet Friday night that he had just accepted a call from Tsai was “not credible.”
“This has all the hallmarks of a prearranged phone call,” Chang said.
“It doesn’t make sense that Tsai out of the blue would call Donald Trump. She is not known for taking big leaps into the unknown, and it would be politically embarrassing when it was learned that she called Trump and he would not take her call.”
Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump’s transition team, brushed aside questions about what the call signals about the incoming administration’s priorities and policy on China.
“All he did was receive a phone call,” Conway told reporters Sunday at Trump Tower in New York. “Everybody should just calm down. He’s aware of what our nation’s policy is.”