This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Paul Heer about the conundrum of Taiwan — one of the thorniest and most fraught issues confronting the new Biden foreign policy team as it navigates the U.S.-China relationship. Paul is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and studies Chinese and East Asian issues. He served as the national intelligence officer for East Asia from 2007 to 2015, and was previously a senior analyst at the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence in its China Issue Group. In December 2020, Paul published two articles about Taiwan policy in The National Interest: “The Strategic Dilemma of Taiwan’s Democracy” and “The Inconvenient Truth About Taiwan’s Place in the World.” This episode’s conversation centers on the diagnosis and recommendations made in those two pieces.

6:48: The democratic David versus the authoritarian Goliath

17:47: Taiwan reunification in the Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 era

36:55: The U.S. position on Taiwan

40:22: The future of one country, two systems

Recommendations:

Paul: The works of Charles Dickens. 

Kaiser: Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, by Rebecca Wragg Sykes.

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