Eyck Freymann

Because it recognizes that this region is held together

through trade routes that go through international waters, international airspace.

It's been stable since 1945.

And if the United States starts allowing borders to be changed by force, trade routes to be changed by force, very quickly the whole regional order in this part of the world will collapse.

And this is a grave economic danger for the United States as a geopolitical danger.

So that's the view.

And unfortunately, what China is doing is they're trying to revise that situation by pushing in the gray zone, pushing through coercion.

And there's obviously always the risk they could escalate to war.

So the whole policy is sort of strange because it was never put forward by one person.

It emerged through accretion.

So it's like seeing 100 bottles of beer on the wall.

Like you keep adding a new lyric every time there's a new administration.

So what is the components of the one China policy?

Well, there's three communiques, three agreements that the United States signed with China between the 70s and the 80s.

And those are the political foundation of our relationship with the PRC.

and the language is vague, and there's some key phrases that are translated differently in English and Chinese, so we get to claim that the other side said things that the other side says it doesn't say.

There's a whole lot of that.

But basically, the United States' position is we will have a relationship

with the PRC.

We will treat Beijing as the sole legitimate government of China, but we will maintain, for all practical purposes, an informal relationship with Taiwan as if it were a country, just not technically, not de jure.