Hello and welcome to the Strait Up Podcast, the show about international affairs with a focus on East Asia and of course Taiwan.

Tensions between the United States and China have been at historic highs recently. Taiwan is of course at the center of much of the tension. But how do other countries who have relations with both China and the United States feel about the tensions?

Well one good way to answer these questions is through public opinion surveys. And my guest today is someone who has done just that. Zuri Linetsky is a Research Fellow at Eurasia Group Foundation. He is also the co-author of a recent survey and analysis which asked people in three countries, South Korea, the Philippines, and Singapore, how they feel about US-China tensions. These countries were chosen because they are all in the Indo-Pacific region and all have fairly strong relationships with both the United States and China. I spoke with Zuri just after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing. 

This interview is a relatively long one and focuses specifically on the research methods and findings of the survey. I would encourage those who are able to look at the survey results themselves, as they have many useful graphs to help understand the findings. The survey can be found here.

The survey not only asks how people in the three countries feel about US-China tensions but also more general questions about their positive and negative views of the US and China individually. I found some of the results quite surprising, but I'll let Zuri explain the rest. 

This week, I bring you the last of my interviews conducted during a recent trip to Washington DC. This time we have the President of FAPA (Formosan Association for Public Affairs) Minze Chien (簡明子). FAPA is a DC-based organization whose mission is to educate US policymakers about Taiwan, with the goal of establishing official diplomatic relations between the US and Taiwan. They also advocate for full Taiwanese independence. We interviewed Chien in-person at FAPA’s Washington office. Given the less-than-perfect recording environment, you will hear some background street noise during the interview, so my apologies for that. 

Obviously, Taiwan independence is a very controversial topic in both Taiwan and in the United States. The current DPP government in Taiwan claims that Taiwan is already independent under the name The Republic of China, but many in Taiwan who consider themselves independence advocates feel that this falls short of true independence, and the issue remains a third rail in Taiwanese politics. The US’ official one-china policy also does not support Taiwanese independence, and the US government has repeatedly stated this position many times even recently. Given the sensitivity of the issue, I should state clearly that the opinions expressed by Minze Chien are those of himself and FAPA alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of this show or of Radio Taiwan International. 

All that being said, it was really great to speak with Chien, as an unabashed advocate for Taiwan independence. He is very clear about FAPA’s goals to this end, and given how the subject is often danced around in domestic Taiwanese politics, it's refreshing to hear someone talk about it publicly in such a straightforward manner. Not only does he support independence for Taiwan, but naturally he also completely rejects the US one-china policy and China’s one-China principle. FAPA also has several near-term goals, which you will hear us discuss in the early part of this interview, but even these are all in service of the greater goal of having the US government treat Taiwan exactly the same as it would any other independent country, even if Taiwan has not yet declared independence. 

Beyond discussing FAPA’s near-term goals, we also discuss how Taiwan has become part of mainstream US politics, the support for independence within Taiwan, and other topics. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

This week, we have another interview recorded during a recent trip to Washington DC. This time, we have Russell Hsiao, executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute, a DC-based think tank focusing exclusively on Taiwan related issues and research. Russell is also a senior fellow at The Jamestown Foundation, and adjunct fellow at Pacific Forum. This interview was conducted in their offices, which is in a very nice historic building near Dupont Circle. 

In this interview, we discuss a few issues related to Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, especially the Pacific Island Countries (PICs) which represent four out of Taiwan’s 13 remaining diplomatic allies. Beyond that topic, Russell also speaks a little bit about his vision of “new economic order,” where democratic countries work together, and how Taiwan figures into that order.

This weekend, the G7 meeting will be held in Hiroshima, Japan. In light of that, in this episode of the podcast I bring you another interview with a top expert in Japanese security policy, this time we have Yuki Tatsumi of the Stimson Center in Washington DC. This is another in this podcast's DC series of interviews conducted in person during a recent trip to Washington. This interview was conducted at the Stimson Center’s office, where Tatsumi-san was nice enough to lend both her time and a conference room at the Stimson Center. 

Yuki Tatsumi is a Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the East Asia Program and Director of the Japan Program at the Stimson Center. Before joining Stimson, Tatsumi worked as a research associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and as the special assistant for political affairs at the Embassy of Japan in Washington. A native of Tokyo, Tatsumi holds a B.A. in liberal arts from the International Christian University in Tokyo and an M.A. in international economics and Asian studies from Johns Hopkins University in Washington.

Last episode, we spoke with another Japan expert, Jeffrey Hornung at the RAND Corporation. We covered many topics in that interview, and if you are interested in Japanese security issues I would encourage you to go check out that episode. This interview with Yuki Tatsumi is a little bit more focused on the specific topic of Maritime safety. Tatsumi-san was the moderator for a working group which brought together experts from Taiwan, Japan, and the US to discuss how to improve cooperation in maritime safety in the East and South China seas, and in the region more broadly. 

Beyond that topic, we also discussed how the war in Ukraine has changed thinking within Japan about defense, what she expects to hear from the G7’s joint statement, and how nuclear politics may be coming back to the mainstream of conversations about security in the Indo-Pacific.

As tensions have heated up in the Taiwan Strait the past several years, public conversations about Taiwan, its defense and the various scenarios arising from a military conflict remain focused on the militaries of China, the US, and Taiwan. However, one topic which is of great interest to me is how other neighboring countries would get involved. Japan and increasingly the Philippines, may have a role to play in a Taiwan contingency, and clearly have skin in the game in any conflict in the Taiwan Strait. 

Today’s episode is about Japan. Japan has a very unique defense policy that is different from every other country in the world. A combination of legal, constitutional, and political-normative restraints has resulted in a country that has one of the largest economies in the world, but a military which does not match its economic power. Its military is also meant to be purely defensive, which severely limits its flexibility as a tool of the state and of diplomacy. However, some big changes to Japan’s long standing policies may have created space for more involvement in a potential Taiwan conflict.

Today, we have as our guest one of the top experts on Japan and its security policy, Jeffrey Hornung from the RAND corporation. This is the first interview in this podcasts DC series, which is a group of interviews I conducted during a recent reporting trip to Washington DC. You can hear the rest of the interviews in the coming weeks on the podcast, so stay tuned.

Jeffrey Hornung is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and an adjunct professor in the Asian Studies Program at Georgetown University. He specializes in Japanese security and foreign policies, East Asian security issues, and U.S. foreign and defense policies in the Indo-Pacific region. He received his Ph.D. in political science from The George Washington University, and was also a visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo where he conducted his doctoral research as a Fullbright Fellow. He also holds an M.A. in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. 

We recorded this interview at RAND Corporation's Washington DC office. In our discussion, we talk about Japan’s unique policies, and its view about a Taiwan conflict, former prime minister Abe’s role in promoting the Taiwan issue, how Okinawans feel about a Taiwan conflict, Japan’s defense agreements with countries other than the US, and other topics. 

In our premiere episode, host Chris Gorin has a conversation with Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies (lower house of the Czech parliament) Markéta Pekarová Adamová. This conversation was recorded just after her return from her trip to Taiwan where she led a delegation of more than 150 people from government, academia, and business. She discusses why the Czech Republic is stepping up its engagement with Taiwan, and how the war in Ukraine has affected how Europe sees Taiwan.

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The US has approved US$619 million worth of arms sales to Taiwan including missiles for its F16 fighter jets, and will be sending more troops towards Taiwan.  Natalie Tso speaks with military strategist Tamkang University Professor Alexander Huang about the significance of these packages.

Natalie Tso speaks with Belize Ambassador Candace Pitts and Taiwan's ambassador to the United States Hsiao Bi-khim about their work and their insights for women today.