U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged following President Donald Trump’s Sept. 24 meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to U.S. officials and Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), despite Beijing raising the Taiwan issue during the White House talks.
Shen Youzhong, deputy minister of the MAC, said on Sept. 27 that three elements of the U.S.-China-Taiwan relationship remained unchanged: the structure of U.S.-China strategic competition, Washington’s policy toward Taiwan, and support in Taiwan, the United States and other countries for maintaining peace and the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.
US officials say Taiwan policy remains unchanged
Reuters reported that Trump and Xi met at the White House on Sept. 24 during Xi’s state visit to Washington. The summit produced agreements in areas including trade and artificial intelligence, but major strategic differences remained. China’s state-run Xinhua reported that Xi urged Washington to oppose “Taiwan independence” and handle the Taiwan issue cautiously.
The White House fact sheet released after the visit detailed agreements on trade, artificial intelligence, Iran and other issues, but did not mention Taiwan. On Sept. 26, Trump publicly acknowledged that Taiwan had been discussed, telling reporters that the two leaders did not spend much time on the issue and that Xi understood his position.
Jakob Lengacher, the U.S. State Department’s Chinese-language spokesperson, told Voice of America that “U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged.” He said Washington continues to prioritize peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and the Taiwan Strait, opposes unilateral attempts by either side to change the status quo, and supports a free and open Indo-Pacific.
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U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue also said after the summit that Washington’s Taiwan policy had not changed. Perdue said the Trump administration continued to support the Taiwan Relations Act, the three U.S.-China joint communiqués and the Six Assurances.
Taiwan’s MAC points to ‘three unchanged’ dynamics
At a Sept. 27 seminar in Taipei, Shen said, according to the Central News Agency (CNA), that the high-profile state visit had produced limited concrete breakthroughs on issues including artificial intelligence, rare-earth controls and technology competition.
Shen said the MAC’s assessment could be summarized in three points: the structure of U.S.-China strategic competition remained unchanged; U.S. policy toward Taiwan remained unchanged; and Taiwan, the United States and other countries continued to support peace and the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.
On the broader U.S.-China relationship, Shen said dialogue mechanisms would continue but that structural competition between Washington and Beijing remained. On Taiwan, he pointed to statements from U.S. officials before and after the summit as evidence that Beijing’s position had not produced a change in U.S. policy.
Shen also argued that Xi may have hoped to link the Taiwan issue with the conflict involving Iran, saying he believed Trump did not accept such a trade-off. Neither U.S. nor Chinese official readouts publicly confirmed that the two issues had been linked in the talks.
Shen also cited international statements on the Taiwan Strait. In a Sept. 22 joint statement issued on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea and the United Kingdom said: “We encourage dialogue and oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.”
He also warned that Beijing could use post-summit messaging to portray “Taiwan independence” as a threat to regional stability and to amplify doubts about U.S. reliability ahead of Taiwan’s local elections. The remarks were presented as the MAC’s assessment rather than evidence of a specific newly identified influence operation.
MAC disputes Beijing’s World War II framing
The White House fact sheet also said Trump and Xi “recalled that United States and China were allies in World War II and fought side by side to win the war.”
Shen disputed Beijing’s framing of that history, arguing that the wartime Chinese government allied with the United States was the Republic of China (ROC), rather than the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which was established in 1949. He accused the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of using the summit to “distort the history of World War II” and promote what he described as the false impression that the CCP and the United States had been wartime allies.
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