Strategic Ambiguity vs. Clarity

US-Taiwan Policy: A Guide for the Perplexed

Last Thursday, Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI), joined by twenty-three other House Republicans, introduced a concurrent resolution calling on the White House to recognize Taiwan as an independent sovereign nation. I doubt anything will come of it (this is Rep. Tiffany’s fourth time introducing the same resolution, and resolutions don’t have the force of law). But the first three weeks of Trump’s second term, if nothing else, show that his administration is willing to upend foreign-policy orthodoxies — and for all we know, major changes to US-Taiwan policy could be just around the corner.

Some new appointees in State will soon be asked to whip up fresh policy recommendations for Secretary Rubio on whether strategic ambiguity or strategic clarity is more likely to prevent a war over Taiwan.

This post is a comprehensive guide to understanding that debate. I read 50 op-eds and academic articles about this question and catalogued what they said.¹ Since 2020, every debate over strategic ambiguity vs. strategic clarity is just some combination of the same 12 arguments (I never encountered a genuinely distinguishable #13) — so reading this one piece will get you completely up to speed on the current state of the discussion.

At the end of this piece, we’ll also give out awards for the two essential pieces making pro and con arguments.

Our working definitions:

• Strategic ambiguity 戰略模糊 is the “policy” of the United States to (1) not commit to Taiwan that the US military would respond in the event of Chinese use of force, and (2) not commit to China that the US military would not respond in the event of Chinese use of force. The idea is to simultaneously deter Taiwan from pursuing de jure independence and deter China from taking military action against Taiwan. I put “policy” in quotes because there is no statute or executive order which establishes this practice. Even so, every US president since Nixon has basically adhered to this approach.

• Strategic clarity 戰略清晰 is a proposed but as-yet-unadopted policy for the United States to abandon strategic ambiguity and make an explicit defense commitment to Taiwan.²

The five arguments for strategic clarity:

1. Strategic clarity is not provocative per se. If worded carefully and announced thoughtfully, strategic clarity can be in full accordance with the One-China policy, and China will have no legitimate excuse to be any more antagonized than it was before. On the other side of the Strait, the risk of appeasing or emboldening Taiwan separatists is low. Bona fide separatists are a fringe minority of the Taiwanese population and hold very little political capital. Taiwan’s elected leaders, whether KMT or DPP, are very careful when making public statements. And even if we assume for the sake of argument that strategic clarity could embolden separatism in Taiwan, the benefits of adopting strategic clarity would far outweigh those risks.

2. Adopting strategic clarity is necessary to effectively deter China today. The United States hasn’t demonstrated sufficient clarity in other recent conflicts — e.g. regarding Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iran — to disastrous consequences. Even the best of sanctions can go only so far. Hard military capabilities are necessary, of course, but they are no longer sufficient — the United States needs to demonstrate the will to jump into a hot military conflict. Displaying strong resolve is especially important in conflicts involving paternalistic nuclear-armed states, which includes Russia’s Ukraine invasion as well as a China-Taiwan scenario.

3. Strategic ambiguity has “outlived its usefulness,” “run its course,” and no longer meets the demands of the twenty-first century. The assumptions which underlaid strategic ambiguity may have held 50 years ago, but not anymore. In 1979, the United States could indisputably overpower the PLA in a Taiwan contingency. In the decades since, PLA spending has ballooned, US industrial capacity has crumbled, and PLA operations in the Taiwan Strait are increasingly frequent and aggressive — which means a blockade or outright invasion of Taiwan is no longer a fantasy. Meanwhile, the Taiwanese people may not be willing to accept the status quo indefinitely. If they lose faith in the United States — and ambiguity is hardly a reassuring defense commitment — Taiwan’s leaders could take matters into their own hands and move toward de jure independence at some point. In other words, strategic clarity may keep Taiwan separatists in check more effectively than strategic ambiguity.

4. Everyone — the United States, China, Taiwan, Pacific allies — already assumes that the United States will defend Taiwan if the PLA took kinetic military action against the island. The PLA expects the US military to be involved, and makes preparations accordingly. Strategic clarity, then, merely aligns stated policy with well-understood expectations — no one is guessing anymore. Clearly communicating intentions is generally a good way to prevent war. And in any case, President Biden basically ushered in strategic clarity, stating four times during his presidency that the United States would be obligated to intervene militarily if Taiwan were attacked.³ Xi Jinping didn’t respond to those overtures with a rash blockade or invasion.

5. Strategic clarity reduces abandonment concerns among Taiwan and Pacific allies. After all, there is little incentive for allies to make serious Taiwan-contingency preparations if, deep down, they are unconvinced the United States will come to Taiwan’s defense. Taiwan and Pacific allies need reassurance that their military investments are urgently needed and won’t go to waste — and that’s exactly what strategic clarity would bring. For starters, adopting strategic clarity would make it difficult and politically costly for a future US president to water down the American commitment to Taiwan. Better still, a US policy of strategic clarity has the potential to create a domino effect, whereby Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and others would line up to issue their own clear defense commitments to Taiwan — and that combined deterrent effect would be incredibly powerful in preserving cross-Strait peace.

The seven arguments for strategic ambiguity:

1. Strategic ambiguity maintains US flexibility and reduces entanglement risks. The upshot of no clear defense commitment is that the United States can be extremely nimble in its diplomatic and military responses to any kind of Taiwan contingency. Ambiguity also allows the United States to “hide its cards,” which keeps CCP leadership guessing and thus more cautious;⁴ in fact, strategic ambiguity can take some of the credit for reducing all the PLA’s military actions toward Taiwan to “gray zone” activities, which, though frustrating, are far easier to manage than hot conflict. A clear defense commitment in the form of strategic clarity, on the other hand, would give both China and Taiwan the power to dictate America’s military decisions — and however much Taiwan may deserve US defense, that decision should remain with the United States and its elected leaders alone. For China’s part, strategic clarity would invite China to move as close to US red lines as it could, after which it could dictate the US military’s next moves by deliberately crossing those red lines. And the Taiwanese could be emboldened by strategic clarity to pursue de jure independence, knowing full well the US military is standing by and locked in. An independent Taiwanese identity is burgeoning, and although Taiwan presidents Tsai Ing-wen and Lai Ching-te have been careful, future politicians may not be.

2. Adopting strategic clarity, ironically, could provoke a PLA attack, starting the very conflict it seeks to prevent. China takes threats to its sovereignty extremely seriously — just look at its activities in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and on the Sino-Indian border. An explicit defense commitment would undoubtedly be perceived as a violation of its One-China principle and as crossing the red lines of the 2005 Anti-Secession Law, thereby necessitating an immediate escalatory response. Indeed, the CCP’s top leadership perhaps couldn’t survive politically if they didn’t respond with quick, provocative action: as Orville Schell put it, “I think they’re incapable of saying, ‘We can’t win. It doesn’t work. Let’s just cut our losses and get out’ — because of the matter of face.” That’s especially true for Xi Jinping: “His ambition is too overweening. His sense that any sign of concession evinces weakness is too repugnant to him.”

3. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”: strategic ambiguity has worked for decades — and we all know it has worked because Taiwan is not under CCP rule today. The current US policy framework toward Taiwan is assurance enough. The Taiwan Relations Act requires the United States to “make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability”; the de facto diplomatic relations between the United States and Taiwan have enabled billions of dollars of military assets to be sold to Taiwan. Meanwhile, the holy words memorialized in the Three Communiqués — which US diplomats ritualistically utter before conversations with Chinese counterparts — have largely satiated China’s sovereignty concerns. Having functional diplomatic, military, and economic relations with Taiwan while also not antagonizing China to the point of kinetic military action is one of the biggest US foreign-policy successes of all time. The US-Taiwan-China relationship is managed successfully in large part through adherence to a strict verbal theology — a foreign-policy practice entirely unique to this triangle — and the United States shouldn’t do anything to upset this delicate balance.

4. Adopting strategic clarity poses credibility issues. Especially given the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as waning US industrial capacity, the United States is in no position to change its force posture quickly enough to make an explicit defense commitment credible. If the CCP leadership doesn’t view US strategic clarity toward Taiwan as credible, perhaps they would come to the wrong conclusion — that the United States is so weak that it can do nothing else but bark. Perceived weakness is dangerous. And even if the CCP leadership doesn’t perceive serious US weakness or unwillingness to defend Taiwan, strategic clarity at least dares China to test US resolve. The PLA could begin by moving militarily on the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen or Matsu islands; an underwhelming US military response to such moves would represent a fatal blow to American credibility.

5. Far from reassuring allies, adopting strategic clarity would create fears of entrapment. Given the strong military interdependence between the United States and its Pacific allies, a US policy of strategic clarity is effectively tantamount to Australian, Japanese, Korean, and Filipino explicit defense commitments to Taiwan as well — and US allies may not be ready or even willing to get involved in a Taiwan contingency. In other words, no domino effect would materialize. While the United States justifiably hopes its Pacific allies would support the US military in defending Taiwan, convincing them to do so would be much harder if they felt blindsided by an American unilateral policy change directly implicating their militaries. The United States shouldn’t needlessly entangle its allies.

6. Whatever one may say about the threat to Taiwan, it is not imminent. There is little to no evidence that China is poised to take Taiwan by force in the near future. Yes, China’s foreign ministry says things all day long, and yes, Xi Jinping publicly sets Taiwan-oriented PLA modernization benchmarks — but the military assets required to pull off a successful amphibious invasion are obscene, and China simply couldn’t hide a buildup of that magnitude from the world, let alone Western intelligence services. Xi Jinping can’t just wake up tomorrow and decide to send the ROROs across the Strait. Adopting a dramatic policy shift in response to a non-imminent threat from China would make engaging with the CCP leadership nearly impossible in the future, for they could assert — and perhaps not without merit — that the United States is the party acting disproportionately. Functional diplomatic relations with China have been crucial in preventing cross-Strait conflict.

7. Maybe the best thing the United States can do to preserve cross-Strait peace is to keep the Taiwan military on its toes and the Taiwanese people mentally ready to fight. Today, however, Taiwan’s defense spending relative to GDP is woefully insufficient; its military assets are being run down by constant PLA incursions; its government likes investing in expensive, shiny toys like submarines and advanced fighter jets, which provide little deterrent value relative to their cost; and conscription is a joke. Strategic ambiguity is tough-love encouragement to the Taiwanese to make serious defense preparations, which is imperative now more than ever. Adopting strategic clarity, on the other hand, would allow the Taiwanese to blindly free ride on US support — precisely the wrong message at the wrong time.

That’s tens of thousands of words all condensed into a completely comprehensive, proudly non-AI-generated, 1,600-word argument map.

What we need now is not more op-eds rehashing exactly these same arguments all over again. Instead, we need hard, empirical analysis to assess the merits of each of these arguments.

For example, a recent survey conducted by UNLV professor Austin Horng-en Wang 王宏恩 showed that “both strategic ambiguity and dual clarity [ie. conditional strategic clarity] induce a similar effect by making citizens in Taiwan less supportive of pursuing de jure independence” — a finding which suggests that the Taiwanese populace is “willing to trade their support for de jure independence for stronger support from the United States.”

With some empirical results like that on the table, diplomats could then assign probabilities to key events (would adopting strategic clarity increase or decrease PLA gray-zone activities? would Pacific allies be more or less likely to adopt explicit defense commitments of their own if the United States adopted strategic clarity? etc.), then assign confidence intervals to each of those probabilities, and then hopefully arrive at an optimal result.

The folks at fp21 and I worked on a project in this vein back in 2023 — a redesign of the State Department memo called the Bayes Brief, which maps evidence to arguments to assessments and finally to policy choices. You can experiment with the Bayes Brief yourself, here — a relatively short, evidence-based questionnaire that will guide you in deciding whether strategic ambiguity or strategic clarity is more likely to prevent conflict over Taiwan.

A system for producing evidence- and data-driven policy conclusions would be far superior to what we have today. At least one reason dozens of op-eds could be boiled down to just a few paragraphs is because, sadly, many of them read something like this: “The Taiwanese love their democratic freedoms. [x10] Therefore, clarity!” That mistakes a conclusion for an argument. As far as I can tell, there is literally zero disagreement in the US foreign-policy establishment over propositions like these:

• The US government should adopt policies that reduce the risk of war.

• Conquest of Taiwan is antithetical to US interests and credibility.

• Taiwan’s status as a democracy is miraculous, admirable, and, all things being equal, worthy of continued US support.

• Taiwan-controlled TSMC is critical to global supply chains and US national security.

• China’s 21st-century military buildup is massive and ongoing.

• The consequences of Chinese military action against Taiwan would be globally catastrophic.

None of these propositions should factor into the ambiguity-vs.-clarity decision. Everyone already agrees; the only disagreement is over how to best keep the peace. As an op-ed from RUSI refreshingly framed it, “The crucial issue here is a disjuncture between the moral grounds for adopting less ambiguous commitments to Taiwan and the continuing strategic utility of ambiguity if the core US objective is avoiding war with China.” Yes! I’ll say the same thing, but less nicely: the literature is full of tacit ad hominem — e.g. “ambiguity proponents are authoritarian shills!”; “clarity proponents are warmongers!” — and appeals to emotion are as unhelpful as they are annoying.

Relying on emotional appeal has led to foreign-policy dumpster fires before. In a 1969 Foreign Affairs essay, democratic advisor and later LBJ SecDef Clark M. Clifford recounted the following anecdote, which took place during the presidential transition from Eisenhower to JFK in January 1961:

My notes disclose the following comments by the President:

“At this point, President Eisenhower said, with considerable emotion, that Laos was the key to the entire area of Southeast Asia.

“He said that if we permitted Laos to fall, then we would have to write off all the area. He stated we must not permit a Communist take-over. He reiterated that we should make every effort to persuade member nations of SEATO or the International Control Commission to accept the burden with us to defend the freedom of Laos.

“As he concluded these remarks, President Eisenhower stated it was imperative that Laos be defended. He said that the United States should accept this task with our allies, if we could persuade them, and alone if we could not. He added, ‘Our unilateral intervention would be our last desperate hope in the event we were unable to prevail upon the other signatories to join us.’”

That morning’s discussion, and the gravity with which President Eisenhower addressed the problem, had a substantial impact on me. He and his advisers were finishing eight years of responsible service to the nation. I had neither facts nor personal experience to challenge their assessment of the situation, even if I had had the inclination to do so. The thrust of the presentation was the great importance to the United States of taking a firm stand in Southeast Asia, and I accepted that judgment.

After returning from diplomatic visits to several Southeast Asian nations as well as Australia and New Zealand in the summer of 1967, Clifford recalled,

I returned home puzzled, troubled, concerned. Was it possible that our assessment of the danger to the stability of Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific was exaggerated? Was it possible that those nations which were neighbors of Viet Nam had a clearer perception of the tides of world events in 1967 than we? Was it possible that we were continuing to be guided by judgments that might once have had validity but were now obsolete? In short, although I still counted myself a staunch supporter of our policies, there were nagging, not-to-be-suppressed doubts in my mind.

That’s a confession if I’ve ever seen one.

Award Section

• Most persuasive article advocating for strategic clarity: US Army Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey C. Higgins. He analyzes several historical episodes in which US officials’ ambiguous and unsynchronized defense commitments — pre-WWII Europe, post-WWII Korea, and more recently, Afghanistan and Ukraine — resulted in increased hostilities in precisely those regions. Continued ambiguity and incoherent messaging toward Taiwan will inevitably lead to the same result: adverse military action.

• Most persuasive article advocating for strategic ambiguity: Nien-chung Chang-Liao 張廖年仲 & Chi Fang 方淇. A switch to strategic clarity, they argue, could pressure CCP leaders to abandon PLA gray-zone tactics in favor of more aggressive military tactics, while simultaneously limiting the range of acceptable response options at the disposal of the United States.

1. Methodology: date-restricted Google searches. Authors needed to be of a stature such that they were betting their professional credibility on their policy position.

2. Two other good things to know:

First, both sides of the debate use “dual deterrence” — but that means different things depending the policy.

• When strategic-ambiguity proponents say “dual deterrence,” they are just referring to the policy’s effect of deterring both China from invading and Taiwan from pursuing de jure independence.

• When discussing strategic clarity, however, “dual deterrence” refers announcing an explicit defense commitment to defend Taiwan, but making that commitment conditional on Taiwan not pursuing de jure independence. That form of conditional strategic clarity — also called “dual clarity” — stands in contradistinction to unconditional strategic clarity, which is what most proponents of a policy shift away from ambiguity are talking about.

Second, the One-China principle and One-China policy are not at all the same.

The One-China principle 一个中国原则 belongs to China, and is simply these three points:

[1] There is only one China in the world, [2] Taiwan is a part of China, and [3] the government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China.

世界上只有一个中国，台湾是中国的一部分，中华人民共和国政府是代表全中国的唯一合法政府。

The One-China policy belongs to the United States. We have the State Department to thank for this definition, which, unfortunately, is about as succinct and non-circular as possible:

The Three Communiqués, Taiwan Relations Act, and Six Assurances provide the foundation for US policy toward China and Taiwan. The United States should continue to uphold the One-China policy and support a peaceful and mutually agreeable cross-Strait outcome. Under this policy, the United States recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China and acknowledges the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China. As required by the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States continues to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character and maintains the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people of Taiwan. The United States also upholds the Six Assurances on US policy toward Taiwan.

The differences are as subtle as they are important. For example, the One-China policy of the United States recognizes parts of the One-China principle (like most of the third prong) while only acknowledging China’s position on other parts of it (like the second prong).

People make mistakes all the time. In Rep. Tiffany’s proposed concurrent resolution:

• “the [US] President should abandon the antiquated ‘One China Policy’” — correct!

• “Communist China has weaponized the so-called ‘One China Policy’ to block Taiwan’s membership and full participation in international organizations and events” — incorrect.

So, China has its One-China principle, the United States has its One-China policy (and other nations with diplomatic relations with China have their own One-China policies) — but what about “One China” as between the governments of Taiwan and China?

The current arrangement is called One China, with respective interpretations 一个中国各自表述, which has its origins in the “1992 Consensus” 九二共识. Before then, official-to-official contact between Taiwan and China was very limited, because China required Taiwan officials — as it requires of officials from every nation — to accept the One-China principle as a precondition for further diplomatic engagement. KMT officials long refused to do so.

In 1992, while pre-democratically-elected Lee Teng-hui 李登輝 was the president of Taiwan, representatives from Taipei’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and Beijing’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) met in British Hong Kong. Both sides issued public statements after the meeting:

SEF: On November 3, a responsible person of the Communist Chinese ARATS said that it is willing to “respect and accept” SEF’s proposal that each side “verbally states” its respective principles on “one China.”

ARATS: At this working-level consultation in Hong Kong, SEF representatives suggested that each side use respective verbal announcements to state the one China principle. On November 3, SEF sent a letter, formally notifying that “each side will make respective statements through verbal announcements.” ARATS fully respects and accepts SEF’s suggestion.

From then on,

• Taiwan government officials, when communicating with China government officials, would verbally accept at least some version of the One-China principle, even if there is no agreement on what “One China” means when Taiwan officials say it.

• China government officials, for purposes of saving face and upholding the One-China principle, would consider it sufficient that Taiwan officials said the words “One China” to engage in official-to-official dialogue.

Thus the “1992 Consensus” is a misnomer, because there was, and is, no consensus at all. (Even “agree to disagree” or “agree to pretend to agree” isn’t quite right.) Rather, the 1992 Consensus is better described a formulaic diplomatic device which, though murky and controversial, allows officials in Taiwan and China to keep talking.

3. To be sure, Biden’s statements probably do not amount to actually adopting strategic clarity:

• In all four cases, it seemed Biden wasn’t announcing new policy, but rather interpreting existing commitments.

• Except for mentioning NATO Article 5 — to which Taiwan is not party — Biden never specified which commitments he was referring to.

• And each time Biden made those public statements, White House officials walked them back (albeit probably to Biden’s great frustration: in the context of his staffers walking back him saying that Putin “cannot remain in power,” according to NBC, “Biden was furious that his remarks were being seen as unreliable, arguing that he speaks genuinely and reminding his staff that he’s the one who is president”).

Trump and future US presidents, then, may exercise latitude in interpreting US-Taiwan military commitments differently than Biden did.

Here is a breakdown of all four statements, as well as China’s reactions:

1: Biden’s first statement occurred on August 19, 2021, when he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that Article 5 means, “if in fact anyone were to invade or take action against our NATO allies, we would respond … same with— Taiwan.” China Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying 华春莹 responded rather conservatively: she acquiesced that Biden’s comments may have been a “slip of the tongue” 这也许是一个口误, and then repeated basic One-China principle boilerplate. (According to Reuters, “A senior Biden administration official said US ‘policy with regard to Taiwan has not changed.’”)

2: Two months later, at a CNN town hall on October 21, 2021, Anderson Cooper asked Biden, “Are you saying that the United States would come to Taiwan’s defense if China attacked?” Biden replied, “Yes. Yes, we have a commitment to do that.” The MFA’s response this time was a bit stronger and made no excuses for Biden. MFA spokesman Wang Wenbin 汪文斌 said that “there is no room for China to compromise or make concessions” 没有任何妥协退让余地 and encouraged US officials to “speak and act carefully” 谨言慎行 about the Taiwan issue, lest they “seriously damage” 严重损害 the US-China relationship and undermine peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. (White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki chimed in the next day: “The President was not announcing any change in our policy nor has he made a decision to change our policy.”)

3: The third statement came on May 23, 2022, at a press conference with Japan Prime Minister Kishida. Biden was asked, “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, if it comes to that?” Biden replied, “Yes. That’s the commitment we made. … the idea that — that it can be taken by force — just taken by force — is just not a — is just not appropriate.”

The MFA issued its strongest response yet:

• On the same day as the press conference, Wang Wenbin expressed the Chinese side’s “strong dissatisfaction with and firm opposition to the US remarks” 中方对美方言论表示强烈不满和坚决反对, and reaffirmed that China “will take firm actions to safeguard its sovereignty and security interests — and we will do what we say” 中方将采取坚定行动维护自身主权和安全利益，我们说到做到.

• The next day, Wang called out Biden again, demanding he return to his original stance of not supporting “Taiwan independence.”

• And on May 25, Wang accused the United States of supporting “Taiwan independence” both “openly and secretly” 明里暗里, and warned that further provocations would cause the US to “pay an unbearable price” 付出难以承受的代价.

(The White House indicated that there was no policy change.)

The MFA’s strong response here could plausibly be explained by many factors: Biden’s ostensibly successful phone call with Xi two months prior, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcing her intention to visit Taiwan, or just the fact that Biden said aloud three times within a year that the US would defend Taiwan.

4: On September 18, 2022, Scott Pelley asked Biden on a 60 Minutes interview, “What should Chinese President Xi know about your commitment to Taiwan?” Biden replied, “We agree with what we signed onto a long time ago — and that there’s a One-China policy, and Taiwan makes their own judgments about their independence.” Pelley: “But would US forces defend the island?” Biden: “Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.” Pelley: “So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, US forces, US men and women, would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?” Biden: “Yes.”

(60 Minutes inserted a Pelley voiceover immediately afterward: “After our interview, a White House official told us US policy has not changed. Officially, the US will not say whether American forces would defend Taiwan.”)

That fourth statement was uttered barely a month after Pelosi visited Taiwan (to the CCP’s great dismay). Yet the MFA said nothing in response to Biden’s remarks that time around.

To be sure, on September 19, MFA spokeswoman Mao Ning 毛宁 did give a strong response from the podium — lodging “solemn representations” 严正交涉 against the US — but by the end of the day, her remarks had been retroactively removed from the press-conference readout. Today, the readout makes no mention of Biden’s remarks; all that remains about Taiwan is Mao’s criticizing the DPP for sending a Taiwan government official to the United Kingdom.

Why would the CCP have softened its tone here? One possible explanation: Wang Yi 王毅 was on a trip in the United States. On September 20, he met with Henry Kissinger. And on September 23, Wang gave a speech at the Asia Society in New York, in which he gave Biden no criticism — on the contrary, he noted, “In the past year, Chairman Xi Jinping and President Biden, in various flexible ways, conducted multiple strategic communications.” So perhaps the CCP plugged its ears to that last Biden statement to avoid tainting the optics of Wang’s US visit.

4. As Jared McKinney explained on ChinaTalk last year,

If the PRC believes that America is very likely to intervene in an invasion of Taiwan [ie. if the United States adopts strategic clarity], then the PRC would very likely will launch a first strike against forward-deployed American units, logistics, fifth-generation fighters, and destroyers. This first strike would do a lot of damage and create a pause in American military power which could potentially be exploited and snowball into a successful invasion.

If the PRC doesn’t know what we’re going to do [ie. if the United States maintains strategic ambiguity], then they won’t launch a first strike. They’d load up 30,000 soldiers in amphibious vessels — 071s, 075s, ROROs — and send them out into the Taiwan Strait.

At that moment, if we chose to intervene, we could sink them all. If we did that, then in fact no invasion of Taiwan would be possible. But the PRC will get to that point of vulnerability only if they don’t know what we’re going to do and thus decide not to launch a first strike.