Taiwan’s situation is getting more precarious. During Trump’s China visit, he publicly described approved arms sales to Taiwan as a “bargaining chip” with Beijing, while Xi Jinping warned Trump of “clashes and even conflicts” if the Taiwan issue were not handled properly. But also internally, Taiwan is facing conflict: on Wednesday, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan voted on a motion to impeach President Lai Ching-te. The KMT and TPP, which lead the opposition in parliament, accused Lai of undermining the constitutional order. The motion fell short of the required two-thirds majority, as expected, but it is symptomatic of a deeper crisis: a protracted conflict between the executive and the legislature, a deadlocked Constitutional Court, and a polarised society. We asked Ming-Sung Kuo, a Reader in Law at Warwick Law School, how Taiwan is navigating this moment.

1. After Trump’s summit with Xi in Beijing last week, the US President declared he was “not looking to have somebody go independent” on Taiwan and left a pending $14 billion arms package in open-ended uncertainty. What is the public mood in Taiwan after the Trump-Xi meeting right now?

Generally speaking, the public mood in Taiwan is gloomy and mixed with feelings of anger and disappointment. A distinction can be further drawn between politicians and the public, though. It is also worth noting that President Trump’s remarks concerned two related but distinct issues: the US position on Taiwan’s political status and the US continuing support of Taiwan in the face of China’s military threat through arms sales. His suggestion that the pending $14 billion arms deal is now “a very good negotiating chip” in his dealings with China is an obvious deviation from one of the Six Assurances Ronald Reagan communicated, via his envoy in Taipei, to the Taiwanese government in 1982 after the signing of the August 17 US-China Communiqué. Despite the 1982 Communiqué’s reference to the United States intending gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, Taiwan was assured that the United States had not agreed to consult with China on US arms sales to Taiwan under the Six Assurances. Trump’s further denigration of the 1982 Six Assurances as something in “a big, far distance” is even more alarming and damaging, although the government put up a “keep calm and carry on” front, maintaining that it had been kept posted on the US-China negotiations.  I should also note that the public mood uplifted a bit at Trump’s suggestion that he would soon speak to President Lai Ching-te on the arms deal but is again dampened by a US official’s confirmation before a Senate hearing that the US is now ‘doing a pause’ on the pending $14 billion arms package.

With respect to Trump’s remarks that “I’m not looking to have somebody go independent”, the reaction has been different. It divides along the party line, reflecting Taiwan’s societal polarization. Supporters of the ruling party, the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), are disappointed, although the government has strenuously insisted that it has been assured that the US policy on Taiwan remains unchanged, and that its policy of defiance against China was only to maintain the status quo of the Republic of China – Taiwan’s official name – on Taiwan as a sovereign independent nation, instead of seeking Taiwan’s de jure independence. In contrast, the pro-unification opposition and its supporters have cheerfully received Trump’s stern message and interpreted it as a blunt warning against President Lai and the DPP government. It is worth noting that the DPP and the opposition have long traded accusations that the other side has tried to change Taiwan’s status quo as a self-governing constitutional democracy without amending the Constitution, which is officially dubbed Constitution of the Republic of China. This legacy legal instrument was adopted amidst the Chinese civil war and still equivocates on the legal relationship between Taiwan and China, even after it has been amended by some Additional Articles since 1991. Thanks to such constitutional equivocation, both the DPP and the opposition have been able to frame their opposite positions around the Constitution and align themselves with Trump’s newfound conciliatory attitude towards China emerging from his meeting with Xi.

2. Taiwan produces more than 90 per cent of the world’s most advanced semiconductors – a concentration that has long been treated as a strategic shield against Chinese aggression. Will this “Silicon Shield” still hold when the United States is simultaneously relocating TSMC production to its own soil?

I’m not quite sure how effective the Silicon Shield will be in deterring Chinese aggression or, to put it bluntly, I’m never convinced by the very idea of Silicon Shield. As the US-Israel war on Iran continues to play out, the economic fallout of such military action does play a role in decision-making, but only to a certain degree. What determines China’s decision on a forceful takeover of Taiwan, in my view, is its political calculation of whether it will prevail over its rival in such eventualities, not whether the United States and its allies will intervene to protect the semiconductor foundries in Taiwan or how much it has to pay economically to win the war. That said, the TSMC’s decision to move part of its chip production to the United States will undoubtedly have long-term implications to Taiwan. It will eventually weaken Taiwan’s geoeconomic posture. The silver lining is that it will be a protracted process fraught with technical hurdles and other less tangible challenges if the story of Taiwan’s chip miracle can teach us anything. Even if nothing precipitous is coming out of the erosion of the so-called Silicon Shield, it nevertheless makes the Taiwanese society feel less secure and more distrustful of the United States.

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3. Europe is notably absent. Why should this conflict matter more to Europeans than it currently seems to, and what would a credible European Taiwan policy look like?

Apart from the geoeconomic reasons I’ve already mentioned, Europe cannot afford to see the island democracy of Taiwan succumb to China’s increasingly coercive measures when Europe strives to establish itself as a value-based, credible global geopolitical player of strategic autonomy amidst uncertainties of great power competition. Given the geographical distance and Europe’s strategic posture in the Indo-Pacific region, it would be a big ask for European countries to intervene in conflicts across the Taiwan Strait militarily. Still, a credible European Taiwan policy should include more coordinated robust efforts among European countries to counter China’s lawfare aimed at turning the Taiwan question into a Chinese domestic affair. More diplomatic engagement will be welcomed, including the institutionalization of dialogues with Taiwanese government officials on individual policy areas such as mutual legal assistance and cooperation on development issues concerning the Global South. And, of course, the existing trade relations and cooperation in science, education, and other areas between Europe and Taiwan should continue, and need be deepened and broadened at both the European Union and the national level.

4. Let’s turn to domestic politics. This week, Taiwan’s legislature held the first presidential impeachment vote in the island’s history. And since late 2024, the Taiwan Constitutional Court (TCC) has been left with only eight of its fifteen justices – falling below the quorum required to issue binding decisions – after the opposition-controlled legislature blocked President Lai’s nominations to fill the vacancies and raised the quorum. Three of the remaining eight justices have since accused the court itself of acting unlawfully. Can you walk us through the constitutional conflict that led to this point?

It’s a winding path to the perfect constitutional storm that is still very much engulfing the Taiwan Constitutional Court. Under the Constitution, the TCC shall have 15 justices of staggered terms; all of them are nominated and then appointed by the president once a majority of MPs agree. Before seven justices left the court at the end of their eight-year term on 31 October 2024, all the 15 justices were appointed by the then president TSAI Ing-wen of DPP, who stepped down on 20 May of the same year. During her two-term presidency from 2016 to 2024, the TCC rendered several landmark decisions, including the Same-Sex Marriage Case, while upholding a series of reform legislation pushed by the DPP but strongly contested by the opposition.

Against this backdrop, the TCC was portrayed as a partisan player. So, after winning a majority of seats in the parliament in the 2024 general elections, the opposition further rode on the popular reaction against the TCC’s restrictive judgment on the death penalty and passed a bill to amend the Constitutional Court Procedure Act on 20 December. Four days later, the parliament rejected all seven justice nominations by the current president, Lai Ching-te. Before the amendment, the quorum for the TCC was two-thirds of all sitting justices, and the TCC would still be able to function with the presence of six justices, even if it was left with only eight justices. Yet, under the new procedural rule, the quorum for a merits-based decision was fixed at 10, regardless of the number of sitting justices. The TCC was thus virtually brought to a halt under the new quorum requirement. It’s also worth noting that the parliament rejected another seven justice nominations by the president in July 2025, amidst a heated political campaign aimed at recalling all constituency-elected opposition MPs.

The TCC’s interregnum only ended on 19 December 2025 with a landmark decision of five justices that struck down the amendment, while three justices, for some unknown reasons, boycotted the proceedings. In this way, the TCC eventually brought itself back to normal operation. The trouble is that under the pre-amended procedural rule, at least six justices must be present to satisfy the quorum. Thus, the three dissident justices have since continued to boycott the TCC proceedings and denounced all the TCC judgements (including the 2025 landmark decision) rendered by five justices as null and void in a series of extrajudicial statements. The legitimacy of the TCC is thrown into doubt by justices themselves. As far as I can see, there is no end in sight to this judicial palace tragedy before the current vacancies are duly filled but the zero-sum struggle between President Lai of DPP and the opposition-controlled parliament seems set to continue into the 2028 general elections. Before then, an even larger cloud is gathering around the TCC: four of the eight sitting justices are due to step down at the end of September 2027. It’s hard to see how a TCC of four justices could live up to the constitutional expectation.

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5. On top of this domestic pressure, China has been quietly assembling a legal toolkit against Taiwan for years: criminal investigations against Taiwanese legislators on charges of “separatism”, deportations of Taiwanese citizens from third countries to face trial on the mainland, and a sustained campaign to reinterpret UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 as international recognition of its sovereignty claims over Taiwan. How should Taiwan and its allies respond to a form of pressure that is designed to look, to much of the world, like routine law enforcement?

As you rightly noted, the legal toolkit assembled by China includes different measures. So I would suggest distinguishing between two implications of such a legal toolkit in conceiving of possible responses. The first implication is direct and it is to individuals, including MPs. In this regard, the government should better communicate to the people the risk of being deported to China from countries entering into extradition arrangements with China. Notably, some EU members – Spain, for instance – are amongst the rest. The government should coordinate travel agencies to minimize the transit via such countries in arranging itineraries of overseas group tourism. Also, the government should liaise with the parliament with respect to relevant MPs travelling overseas.

The second implication is to the status quo of Taiwan. The contested UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 is, of course, China’s foremost choice from its legal toolkit. Yet it is just part of China’s lawfare to create the impression that China is exercising effective control over Taiwan through the assertion of legislative and enforcement jurisdiction, even for extraterritorial criminalities committed by Taiwanese. To this, Taiwan can do a better job by making it clear that none of China’s symbolic jurisdiction assertions can translate into effective control. With respect to China’s reinterpretation of the UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, the Taiwanese government could emphasize the fundamental change of circumstances surrounding it, including Taiwan emerging as a full-fledged self-governing democracy. It should also urge its allied governments (as opposed to legislatures or individual MPs) to set out their legal positions on the Resolution. Moreover, with its allies, Taiwan should endeavour to reach out to the Global South countries on the battle over the Resolution, despite China’s enormous influence on those countries.

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That’s it for this week. Take care and all the best!

Yours,

the Verfassungsblog Team

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