Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a formal statement Thursday morning expressing “serious concern” over the language adopted in the U.S.-China joint communiqué signed at the Beijing summit, and calling on Washington to clarify the document’s Taiwan paragraph “in terms consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances.”
The statement — posted in Mandarin and English on the ministry’s official website within hours of the communiqué’s release — is Taipei’s sharpest formal diplomatic response to a U.S.-China joint document in several years. It stops short of condemning the summit outright. Taiwan’s government is careful about publicly criticizing Washington on matters that affect the bilateral relationship. But the invocation of “serious concern,” combined with an explicit call to honor the Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances by name, is the full register of diplomatic objection available to Taipei without fracturing the alliance.
The trigger was a single paragraph in a 28-point, 3,200-word document. The Taiwan section runs to 64 words — Reuters counted — and states that both governments “reaffirm their commitment to the one-China policy as understood by each respective party.” The phrase “as understood by each respective party” is what Taiwan’s foreign ministry flagged, because it places both governments’ interpretations of the same text on equal footing. That formulation has a specific diplomatic history, and Taipei’s foreign ministry understands exactly what it concedes.
What the Language Does and Doesn’t Say
The United States has maintained a one-China policy since the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972. That policy acknowledges — but does not endorse — Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China. The distinction is load-bearing. The Taiwan Relations Act, passed by Congress in 1979, establishes the framework for unofficial U.S.-Taiwan relations and authorizes the executive branch to provide Taiwan with defensive arms for self-defense. The Six Assurances — communicated to Taiwan’s government by the Reagan administration in 1982 — include, among other commitments, a pledge not to formally recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan and not to set a date for ending arms sales.
Thursday’s Beijing communiqué does not reference the Taiwan Relations Act. It does not reference the Six Assurances. It does not include language opposing unilateral changes to the status quo by either side — a formulation that appeared in the Biden-Xi Woodside summit statement in 2023 and in other prior U.S.-China bilateral documents, and that Taipei’s security planners have come to treat as a necessary signal to Beijing about American resolve. The joint communiqué released by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirms the same text.
What appears in a U.S.-China joint statement matters less for what it says than for what its omissions imply. The absence of “oppose unilateral changes” language from this communiqué is, in diplomatic terms, an absence — the kind that gets cited in subsequent negotiations, internal assessments, and historical records. Taiwan’s foreign ministry noticed. China’s foreign ministry noticed too, though its public statement on the summit characterized Thursday’s session as “highly successful” on all fronts.
The communiqué also contains no reference to the $14 billion frozen arms package — Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptor missiles, surface-to-air defense systems, and anti-drone equipment — that has been held at the State Department since late last year. That package was approved by Congress under the Taiwan Relations Act. The executive branch’s explanation for the delay has been that it is a scheduling matter, not a policy decision. Whether that characterization is sustainable after a summit that left the Taiwan paragraph deliberately ambiguous is one of the questions the senators’ statement Thursday afternoon was designed to force.
The Eight Senators and Their 60-Day Demand
Six of the eight bipartisan senators who warned Trump before his departure against trading away Taiwan’s security issued a joint statement Thursday afternoon. It described the communiqué’s Taiwan section as “insufficient” and called on the State Department to advance the frozen $14 billion arms package within 60 days “as a concrete demonstration that the communiqué’s ‘as understood’ qualifier means what Washington says it means.”
The two remaining senators issued separate statements. One praised the summit’s trade outcomes while expressing concern about the Taiwan language, calling for congressional hearings on the communiqué’s implications. One called for additional information before taking a formal position. Neither endorsed the Taiwan paragraph as adequate.
The 60-day timeline creates a specific and public accountability window. The State Department is not legally required to treat a congressional statement as binding — the Taiwan Relations Act authorizes but does not mandate specific arms sales on a particular timetable — but the political arithmetic of ignoring six bipartisan senators who are on record before and after the summit becomes difficult to sustain quietly. The State Department had not responded to the senators’ statement by Thursday afternoon. A senior department spokesperson, asked directly about the 60-day demand, said the department “continues to review its arms transfer schedule with respect to Taiwan” and declined further comment.
That response is the diplomatic equivalent of no action. The senators are counting on the fact that it reads that way publicly.
What Taiwan’s Government Is Watching
Taiwan’s government is not passive in the face of diplomatic ambiguity. The ministry’s formal statement was accompanied by a separate background briefing provided to credentialed journalists, in which officials indicated that Taipei’s defense posture is not contingent on the content of U.S.-China joint statements. Taiwan’s own strategic planning is built around the assumption that executive-branch discretion in Washington is structurally unpredictable — a conclusion the current episode is doing nothing to revise.
Taiwan’s indigenous defense programs are proceeding on their own timelines, independent of the frozen U.S. package. The domestically produced Hai Kun-class submarine program — Taiwan’s first modern submarine construction effort — is advancing through trials. The Indigenous Defense Fighter follow-on is in development. Reserve force restructuring, mandated after the Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the necessity of trained reserve capacity in a potential strait conflict, is in its second year of implementation.
The $14 billion frozen package represents capability Taipei wants and cannot replicate domestically — Patriot interceptor missiles and anti-drone systems in particular address specific gaps in Taiwan’s layered air defense — but it does not represent the whole of Taiwan’s defense strategy. The island has been building precisely because it has learned not to rely on any single source of capability or any single political administration in Washington.
The summit setup coverage from Wednesday evening noted that the economic work Bessent completed in Seoul set the baseline for a commercially productive bilateral, and that Taiwan and Iran were the tests the trade language would not address. That prediction held. What Taipei is watching now is not anything in Friday’s Day 2 sessions — working-level talks on investment, aviation certification, and financial market access carry no Taiwan implications — but what the State Department does with the senators’ 60-day clock.
The oil price dynamic adds an indirect layer to Taiwan’s calculation. The Hormuz disruptions that have driven energy costs higher since March have also focused both governments’ attention on energy security as a lever in the Tehran negotiation — and China’s refusal to use that lever at the summit table means Iran’s pressure on the strait continues with no immediate constraint. That matters for Taiwan because a prolonged Iran conflict occupies U.S. military planning bandwidth that would otherwise be concentrated on the Western Pacific. Taiwan’s defense establishment has been tracking that reallocation since the first Hormuz attack.
The Communiqué’s Ambiguity as a Deliberate Product
The Taiwan paragraph’s 64-word ambiguity is almost certainly not accidental. Both governments have diplomatic teams experienced enough to produce precise language when they choose to. The “as understood by each respective party” formulation is what emerges from negotiations where neither government is prepared to move and both governments are unwilling to publicly say so.
For Beijing, the formulation is a measurable gain: a U.S. president has signed a joint document that treats both governments’ one-China interpretations as co-equal within a shared text — a subtle but trackable step beyond prior U.S.-China communiqués that have been more careful to preserve the distinction. For Washington, the qualifier preserves the traditional American position, which has never formally accepted Beijing’s framing. For Taiwan, the formulation concedes ground not in law — the Taiwan Relations Act remains the operative framework — but in the diplomatic record that gets cited in future negotiations and future documents.
The six senators’ 60-day demand will determine whether the ambiguity has operational consequences. The precedent they are invoking — that congressional approval of an arms sale creates a presumption of delivery under the Taiwan Relations Act — has force. Whether it has sufficient force to move a State Department that has been characterizing its delay as scheduling, not policy, is what the next two months will answer.
The State Department’s silence, as of Thursday afternoon, is its own signal. Taiwan’s foreign ministry, and the senators, read it the same way.
Sources 6 cited · 4 primary
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs Statement on the U.S.-China Joint Communiqué — Taiwan Paragraph
- Senators' Statement on the Beijing Summit Joint Communiqué
- Taiwan Relations Act — Public Law 96-8, 96th Congress (1979)
- Xi Jinping Holds Talks With U.S. President Trump — Joint Communiqué of the People's Republic of China and the United States of America
- Taiwan Calls Beijing Summit Taiwan Language 'Insufficient,' Presses Washington on Arms
- Beijing Summit Communiqué Leaves Taiwan Language Ambiguous, Security Commitments Sparse
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