Former US President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, is remembered in China for bringing an end to decades of hostility and establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing – at the expense of Taiwan.

The diplomatic switch in 1979 led to profound changes in US-China relations in the following decades – and its implications are still being felt today, as tensions flare across the Taiwan Strait.

During the height of the Cold War, the Carter administration held months of secret negotiations with Chinese officials to normalize relations, which had been estranged since the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949.

For decades, Washington had recognized the Republic of China in Taipei as the sole legal government of China, after the Kuomintang was defeated by the Communists in the civil war and fled from the Chinese mainland to the island of Taiwan.

A rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China began during the presidency of Richard Nixon, who made an ice-breaking visit to Beijing in 1972. But it was Carter who oversaw Washington’s formal switch of diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.

On December 15, 1978, Carter announced that at the start of 1979, the US would end its diplomatic relations with the Republic of China in Taipei and recognize the People’s Republic of China in Beijing as the sole legal government of China.

While celebrated in Beijing, the announcement came as a shock to many in Taiwan, followed by anger and a bitter sense of abandonment and betrayal – even leading to violent anti-American demonstrations in Taipei. The US also terminated its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan and pulled its military personnel from the island.

On January 1, 1979, the US and the People’s Republic of China formally established diplomatic ties, opening embassies in the two countries’ respective capitals. At the end of that month, Carter welcomed China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping on the South Lawn of the White House – the first visit by a Chinese Communist leader to the US.

“We expect that normalization will help to move us together toward a world of diversity and of peace,” Carter said at the welcoming ceremony. “For too long, our two peoples were cut off from one another. Now we share the prospect of a fresh flow of commerce, ideas, and people, which will benefit both our countries.”

In response, Deng praised Carter’s “farsighted decision” in playing a key role in ending the “period of unpleasantness between us for 30 years.”

Bilateral ties flourished in the following years, from trade and investment to academic and cultural exchanges. One area of engagement Carter facilitated was student exchange. During negotiations for normalizing relations, Deng raised the question of whether Chinese students would be allowed to further their studies in the US.

“When posed with that question, my adviser, Dr. Frank Press, thought it important enough to call me at 3 a.m. in Washington to be sure,” Carter wrote in a letter addressed to the Chinese Embassy in Washington and the US State Department in 2019.

“Deng asked me if China could send 5,000 students, and I answered that China could send 100,000,” Carter wrote.

Proponent for engagement and democracy

As bilateral ties worsened in recent years, some critics in the US have questioned the strategy of engagement with China.

Under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Beijing has taken a stark authoritarian turn domestically and become increasingly assertive abroad, dashing the once widely held hope that China would move toward a more liberal political model following economic growth and its integration with the world.

Amid escalating tensions and calls for “decoupling,” Carter has remained a cool-headed voice and firm supporter of continued engagement.

On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the normalization of US-China relations, Carter warned in The Washington Post that the two nations’ critical relationship is “in jeopardy” and “a modern Cold War between our two nations is not inconceivable” if the deep mistrust continues.

“At this sensitive moment, misperceptions, miscalculations and failure to follow carefully defined rules of engagement in areas such as the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea could escalate into military conflict, creating a worldwide catastrophe,” he wrote.

After he left the presidential office, Carter remained a key figure in US-China relations. He visited China multiple times and was received by successive Chinese leaders, from Jiang Zemin – who called him “an old friend of the Chinese people” – to Xi.

In 2019, at the height of a bruising trade war with China, former US President Donald Trump sought Carter’s council in a rare phone call to discuss ongoing trade negotiations with Beijing.

But Carter’s experience with China far predated his presidency. It was his visit to the Chinese coast in 1949 as a young submarine officer in the US Navy that sowed his interest in China, according to an interview Carter gave to the Council on Foreign Relations.

As the civil war raged in China, Carter’s submarine was operating in and out of Chinese seaports, from Shanghai all the way up to Qingdao.

“And so, I got to see the transformation in China between the nationalist Chinese forces who were just occupying a few of the seaports and the communist forces whose campfires we could see on the hillsides,” he said.

A few months after Carter left China, the nationalists fled the mainland to Taiwan. “So, I saw the birth of China which, by the way, was born on my birthday, October the 1st, 1949. And I think that has precipitated my intense interest in China ever since,” he said.

In China, Carter remains a well-respected figure, despite the rocky relationship in recent years.

In reports about his death, Chinese state media outlets noted Carter’s legacy on US-China relations. On Chinese social media, many users hailed him the “good old man.”

Less mentioned by the Chinese government and state media, however, was Carter’s role in promoting religious freedom and grassroots democracy in China.

At a banquet he hosted for the Chinese delegation in 1979, Carter secured Deng’s agreement to permit unrestricted worship and the distribution of Bibles in China. (Under Xi Jinping, Christians have experienced a significant crackdown).

The Carter Center had supported and monitored village elections in rural China for more than a decade since the late 1990s. Carter himself visited a village in eastern China to monitor one such election in 2001, witnessing villagers casting their votes and greeting elected local officials on stage.

That kind of engagement is nearly unthinkable in today’s China, with the Chinese Communist Party repeatedly attacking “Western values” and viewing foreign non-profits – especially those promoting democracy, rule of law and rights advocacy – with deep suspicion.

Complicated legacy in Taiwan

In Taiwan, Carter’s legacy is more complicated.

When Carter made his first visit to Taiwan in 1999, he still faced plenty of questions – and criticism – over his abrupt announcement to break diplomatic relations with Taipei 20 years ago.

At a speech in Taipei, Carter was confronted by veteran Taiwanese opposition politician Annette Lu, who accused him of having set back the democratization process in Taiwan and demanded an apology from him to the Taiwanese people.

Carter declined to apologize, insisting that his decision had been “a right one.”

In a guest lecture at a university in Atlanta in 2018, Carter said he had “a big argument” with Deng over the status of Taiwan during negotiations in 1978.

“China always wanted us to declare that Taiwan was a province of China, and they wanted us to break our treaty with Taiwan and stop all our military assistance,” he said. “I was insisting that we should break our treaty with Taiwan only in agreement with our treaty, which required a one-year notice. I also insisted that we continue to provide defensive assistance to Taiwan and that the differences between China and Taiwan be resolved peacefully.”

Following the diplomatic switch, the US Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which allows Washington to retain close unofficial ties with Taipei, facilitating commercial, cultural and other exchanges through the American Institute in Taiwan – the de facto US Embassy in Taipei.

The legislation also requires the US to “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character” to maintain “a sufficient self-defense capacity,” though it did not specify how the US would respond in case of a Chinese invasion of the island – which became known as a policy of “strategic ambiguity.”

As relations between China and the US plummeted in recent years, the Taiwan issue has become a key source of tension between the two countries.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya has not been seen publicly since Israeli forces raided Kamal Adwan hospital on Friday. Staff members accused Israeli forces of starting a fire in the hospital and said they were all rounded up outside and forced to remove their clothes, a process that took hours, before being forced to leave.

The Israeli military said on Saturday it had detained Dr. Abu Safiya because he was “suspected of being a Hamas terrorist operative,” and claimed that the hospital was being used by Hamas as a “command and control center.” The military did not provide any evidence to support the claims.

His family had issued appeals for his whereabouts following his arrest. Former detainees of Sde Teiman, a shadowy military base in Israel’s Negev desert near the Gaza border, say the doctor and other medics from the Kamal Adwan raid are being held there.

Ahmad Al Sayyed Saleem, 18, said a doctor from the Abu Safiya family was brought into the prison on Saturday. Saleem, who is from northern Gaza and said he knew Dr. Abu Safiya, was detained 42 days ago at an Israeli checkpoint when he evacuated northern Gaza and was on his way to Gaza City.

Yahya Zaqout, who was arrested 42 days ago, said he did not see Dr. Abu Safiya but was in the cell next to his.

“I heard them calling his name between the names they call every morning and night, and we had men that were brought to our cell and told us they were detained along with Dr. Hussam,” he said.

Alaa Abu Banat, a former inmate who was detained 43 days ago on his way home, said he knows Dr. Abu Safiya and a medical team from Kamal Adwan hospital was brought into Sde Teiman.

“They are all still in detention. They treated them really badly especially the doctors,” he said.

Abu Banat said one man who shared his cell told him he is a doctor and said he was beaten “until his eye was bleeding.” The cellmate added had spoken to Dr. Abu Safiya.

“It is widely known the immense efforts he has made since the beginning of the war to support the only healthcare system for the residents of north Gaza,” the statement read.

Long siege

Dr. Abu Safiya has been one of the last doctors in northern Gaza over recent months and has documented the horror inside his hospital in the wake of a renewed Israeli offensive that began in early October in what the Israeli military said was targeting a resurgent Hamas presence there.

The two-month onslaught has razed streets to carpets of debris, killed entire families, and severely depleted food, water and medical stocks.

MedGlobal, the US-based nonprofit Dr. Abu Safiya was lead physician in Gaza for, expressed concern for the doctor and condemned the latest Friday raid on the hospital, which it described as a “lifeline” for northern Gaza.

Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president and co-founder of MedGlobal and a close colleague of Dr. Abu Safiya, said on Sunday: “Dr. Abu Safiya has dedicated his life to protecting the health and lives of children in Gaza, providing care under conditions no medical professional should have to endure. His arrest is not only unjust – it is a violation of international humanitarian law, which upholds the protection of medical personnel in conflict zones. We urgently call for the immediate and unconditional release of Dr. Abu Safiya.”

Kamal Adwan hospital has now ceased to operate.

“All patients and medical staff have evacuated from the area,” of Kamal Adwan hospital, the Israeli military has said. Patients were forced to move to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, the staff said, a facility the WHO has described as “destroyed and nonfunctional.”

Some staff members arrived in other parts of Gaza. Among them is Dr. Hani Badran, a cardiologist who lost 17 members of his family in an Israeli strike in November, including a newborn niece who he had delivered just weeks earlier.

One of the original stereotypes about robots is that their movements are stiff and abrupt, something that endures in the “robot dance” that first became popular in the 1980s.

Robots have since evolved and now exhibit far more human-like qualities, with movements that have become softer and subtler. However, that has been true mostly for humanoid robots, which are a tiny minority compared to the industrial robots that have helped manufacture our goods — such as cars — for decades.

Around 3 million robots work in factories around the world, with about a third of those in the automotive industry, according to an industry body. Now, a company called Micropsi Industries is looking to make even industrial robots closer to humans. “We make a control system that allows industrial robots to do things that without our software they couldn’t do,” says Ronnie Vuine, Micropsi’s founder, “which is essentially having hand-eye coordination and adapting to changing conditions in the environment as they do their work in a factory.”

The company’s first product, called MIRAI, uses artificial intelligence (AI) and cameras to train robots to perform tasks that would be impossible via traditional, pre-programmed movements.

Vuine became interested in AI while a student at Berlin’s Humboldt University in the 2000s. “There was a working group that was interested in how machines learn in the real world when there’s no engineer around to tell them what to do, but they just need to sort out and find out what to do to survive. How would you do that? So that’s been our research interest.”

Vuine says that AI was distinctly unfashionable at the time, but when Google purchased AI company Deep Mind in 2014, it showed the team how AI had become more mainstream and was the motivation they needed to push forward. Micropsi was founded in the same year.

The company is now developing its products for various brands of manufacturing robots. “By far the most advanced industry when it comes to deploying robots at scale is automotive,” Vuine says. “Cars are the most complex artifact we make at scale as humans. We also make planes, and they’re more complex, but we don’t make as many of them. Cars are just the most advanced automation game we play.”

This opens up options for automation to carry out tasks previously handled by humans, which could prove especially useful in producing electric cars. “Automotive is moving to electric. There’s much more cables to be plugged in,” says Vuine. “Of course, it’s terribly important in electronics, where you have ribbon cables (to connect to circuit boards). All of these applications couldn’t be done with robots (previously). You would have to use a human, or you couldn’t do it at all, and would need to redesign your product for manufacturability.”

Having recently moved its headquarters from Berlin to San Francisco, the company is now looking to expand from cars to other products, like power tools and white goods, as well as other fields altogether, like logistics. In the future, the system could power humanoid robots, too. “The software that drives the robot would be very much applicable outside a factory, in a service robot that does your dishes,” Vuine says. “In fact, we sometimes do playful demos that show these capabilities.”

The hurdle to that expansion is not the software, he adds, but robots themselves. “Robots are not made of soft material like humans. They’re made of metal, so it really hurts if they hit you. You need to go very slowly, and you need to put lots of safety around and lo and behold, you’ve created a machine that’s too expensive and too cumbersome to actually live in your home. We just haven’t solved that yet.”

Elections may not be held in Syria for up to four years, the country’s de facto leader has said, in his first comments on an electoral timeline since his rebel group overthrew the Assad regime earlier this month.

After Ahmad al-Sharaa’s comments, it remains unclear how the interim government will hand over power after previously saying it would only stay until March 2025.

“We have to prepare the infrastructure before heading to elections,” al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, said, the Saudi channel Al Arabiya reported Sunday.

Al-Sharaa, who leads the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which earlier in December toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, said in an interview that his interim government also plans to write a new constitution that might take up to three years to draft.

“We are now in the re-foundation of the country and not just managing the country… there is a lot of destruction in the country because of a regime that ruled for more than 50 years,” Al-Sharaa said.

“The opportunity that was given to us today doesn’t present itself every four or five years… the constitution must regulate society so that the previous experience does not repeat itself and Syria heads to the same direction it was in for the past 60 years,” he added.

Al-Sharaa also told Al Arabiya that HTS will eventually be dissolved, the channel said, which will be announced at the upcoming National Dialogue Conference, a meeting that is meant to help with the transitional phase. No date is set yet for the conference.

On Russia, a previous ally of Syria, Al-Sharaa said the new leadership does not want Russia to leave the country “in [a] manner that does not fit its relations with Syria.”

Sources say Russia has been withdrawing a large amount of military equipment and troops since Assad’s toppling.

International legitimacy

A Ukrainian delegation led by foreign minister Andrii Sybiha‎ landed in Damascus on Monday to meet Al-Sharaa, Syrian state media said.

“The Syrian and Ukrainian people have shared the same experiences and struggles,” Syria’s interim foreign minister Asaad Shaibani said in a news conference with Sybiha.

The visit marks the latest in a series of regional and international diplomatic delegations who travelled to Syria to meet the de-facto leader, who, until recently, had a $10 million bounty on his head by the United States.

Al-Sharaa was informed by a high-level US delegation led by the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs, Barbara Leaf, on December 20 that the US would remove the bounty.

Leaf, one of three US officials who sat down with Al-Sharaa in Damascus, described the “policy decision” as one aligned with the need to work on “critical issues” such as combating terrorism.

Al-Sharaa “committed to this,” Leaf said, “and so based on our discussion, I told him we would not be pursuing the Rewards for Justice reward offer that has been in effect for some years.”

European delegations, including officials from the United Kingdom, France and Germany also met Al-Sharaa over the past month, while Qatar, Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain and Turkey all dispatched diplomats for talks with the new leader.

The former jihadist is seeking international legitimacy and distancing himself from his Al-Qaeda past. His style has gradually changed from Jihadist camo attires to statesmen-like suits as he engages in international diplomacy.

Al-Sharaa is also warming up to regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia, telling Arabiya that the kingdom has a big role to play in Syria’s future and that Iran should “rethink its calculations about its interventions in the region.”

“We are folding the old page of boycotts that [Syria] was under with the old regime,” Shaibani said.

For America’s friends in Asia, the uncertainty brought by the impending return of Donald Trump to the White House is coming at a bad time.

China has been modernizing its military and nuclear arsenal while becoming increasingly aggressive in asserting territorial claims in the South China Sea and over Taiwan. North Korea has ramped up its belligerent rhetoric and calls to develop its illegal nuclear program. Both countries have expanded their alignment with Russia as it wages war on Ukraine, linking Asia to the shattered peace in Europe.

For decades, the US has backed the security of its allies in the region, which has more overseas active-duty American troops than anywhere else in the world. Tens of thousands of soldiers are stationed on sprawling bases in treaty allies South Korea and Japan, countries that, like the Philippines and Australia, the US is bound to aid if they come under attack.

Those countries are now preparing for the return of an American leader who has railed against what he sees as free-riding US allies who don’t pay enough for defense, sidled up to autocrats, and called for an “America first” approach to global obligations.

Many questions about Trump are on the minds of US-aligned leaders in Asia, observers across the region say.

Will Trump ask for more defense spending than allies can afford? Could he take an extreme step to withdraw US forces if any such demands aren’t met? Will the businessman-turned-leader cut deals with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un or Russia’s Vladimir Putin that undermine the interests of US allies?

Alternatively, could he perhaps strengthen US alliances and be a tougher opponent for America’s enemies?

In the shadow of this uncertainty, leaders across the region have been scrambling to forge strong ties with the notoriously mercurial incoming US commander-in-chief, who’s known to link foreign policy to personal rapport.

Many are warily eyeing President-elect Trump’s threat to ringfence the world’s largest economy with 10% tariffs on all imports and upwards of 60% tariffs on goods from China, moves that could have significant economic knock-on effects across Asia.

But as Trump’s January inauguration draws closer, governments across Asia are also facing potentially more existential questions about how Trump will manage US security relationships with friends and rivals – and stand by its allies if tested.

‘Indispensable power?’

After World War II, a network of US alliances was established across the world to serve as a powerful deterrent against another global war. A major aim was to prevent more countries from becoming nuclear powers by placing them under the umbrella of the US arsenal.

In the eyes of many in Washington and across Asia, those alliances in Asia-Pacific have only become more critical as relationships in the region become more contentious.

China has expanded its security ties with NATO-adversary Russia and been accused of enabling Moscow’s war by buying up Russian exports and providing the dual-use goods needed for its defense base. Beijing has also ramped up its intimidation of Taiwan, the self-ruling democracy it claims and has vowed to take control of, by force if necessary.

In the South China Sea, the China Coast Guard has in recent months attacked Philippine ships with water cannons and even axes, despite a major international ruling years ago denying its claim to the bulk of the strategically critical waterway.

North Korea, meanwhile, has ramped up its threats toward South Korea and the US as it carries out illegal weapons testing. It’s also aiding Russia’s war with ammunition, missiles, and – in a major, recent escalation – soldiers, US officials say.

But as Trump steps onto a more fraught and complex global stage than at the start of his first term eight years ago, observers in Asia say his focus appears to be on ratcheting up economic pressure on China rather than regional security.

Trump’s “priority is overwhelmingly on the economic relationship and on the United States not losing to China economically,” but there’s little sign “that he is deeply interested in the military or strategic balance in East Asia,” said Sam Roggeveen, director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program in Sydney.

“Everything points in the opposite direction,” Roggeveen said. “He’s interested in – sure – having a strong military and defending the United States … but not in this idea of America as an indispensable power which has a unique global security role.”

The incoming leader and his strategists have instead repeatedly questioned whether the US was getting enough out of its alliances and whether American lives should be lost and dollars spent fighting foreign wars.

Trump shocked European leaders earlier this year by saying he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member country that doesn’t meet the US-led alliance’s defense spending guidelines.

Preparing for Trump 2.0

Weeks before election day, Trump turned that spotlight toward Asia, claiming during an interview with Bloomberg News that were he president, South Korea would pay $10 billion a year to host US troops — about eight times more than Seoul and Washington recently agreed on.

South Korea already spends well over 2% of its gross domestic product on defense, considered by the US to be a benchmark for its allies. Over the past decade, the country has also paid 90% of the cost for expanding Camp Humphreys, the US’ largest overseas base.

But Trump’s comments have sparked fears in Seoul that he could seek to renegotiate cost-sharing for US troops, despite a five-year agreement reached earlier this year that will raise Seoul’s spending to 8.3% more in 2026 than the previous year. A failed renegotiation – in a worst case posed by some observers – could result in a Trump decision to downsize or withdraw US forces meant to counter the threat from its belligerent northern neighbor.

Such a scenario, or broader feelings that US commitment is waning, could also push Seoul toward developing its own nuclear arsenal – a potential first step on a slippery slope that could lead more middle powers to proliferate such weapons, experts say.

But dealings with Trump have become a lot more complicated for South Korea. Lawmakers there voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol earlier this month after his shock declaration of martial law, and then weeks later voted to impeach acting president Han Duck-soo. The country now faces months of political uncertainty at a time when observers have said building a strong leader-to-leader relationship is key.

“The biggest challenge is whether Seoul and Washington will be able to communicate properly,” said Duyeon Kim, a Seoul-based adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Such communication is key to “avert devastating consequences and surprises in the US-South Korea alliance that we currently assume would happen based on Trump’s harsh rhetoric against allies,” she added.

In Japan, pundits have lamented the perceived deficiencies of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba compared with the late Shinzo Abe, known as Asia’s “Trump whisperer” for his finesse in getting close to the president-elect during his first term.

The key American ally in Asia is likely to stress its own sweeping changes to its defense posture since Trump was last in power.

Tokyo has veered away from the pacifist constitution imposed by the US in the aftermath of World War II, in 2022 moving to boost defense spending to about 2% of its GDP by 2027 and buy up American cruise missiles.

Countries throughout the region are also watching whether the Trump administration picks up the mantle of a key piece of Biden’s legacy: efforts to build across Asia what State Department officials have called a “lattice work” of interwoven US partnerships, part of the administration’s “invest, align, compete” strategy to counter Beijing.

Biden bolstered the Quad (India, Japan, Australia and the US) security group and founded the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom and the US) partnership that aims to equip Canberra with nuclear-powered submarines. He also brokered significant increases in Japan’s security coordination with South Korea, the Philippines and Australia.

Trump – as an unpredictable force in the White House – could drop, maintain or even deepen these relationships. But in the meantime, America’s Asian allies will look to hedge against any decline in US support.

“The United States is now not the constant of international affairs, but rather the variable,” said Murata Koji, a professor of political science at Japan’s Doshisha University.

“That’s why we have to expand our security (outside) the United States,” he said, pointing also to Tokyo’s need to deepen its partnership with Europe over shared concerns.

China watching closely

That said, experts across the region broadly feel it’s unlikely there will be seismic changes in the US security presence under Trump, in terms of drawing down troops or tearing up alliance agreements, especially given American focus on the challenge posed by China.

“Geopolitical realities and circumstances will oblige him to try to maintain forces in the region. The scenario that I’m thinking of is more of renegotiating, more than outright withdrawal,” said Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

And countries will not just be considering potential downsides to Trump’s return, Koh added, pointing to perceptions in Asia that Biden has hesitated in some of his decisions on Ukraine, complicating the situation for the besieged country.

“With Trump coming in, there could be some renewed hope that (he) will not be like Biden in terms of crisis – maybe Trump will be more decisive,” he said.

There are concerns, however, that an expected aggressive economic policy toward China could lead to a further breakdown in communication between the US and Chinese militaries, raising the risk of confrontation between the two. And if US allies are hurt by new American tariffs, they may have no choice but to rely more on the world’s second-largest economy.

On the other hand, Trump also signaled some interest in working with China, implying in recent comments to CNBC that he saw at least certain aspects of his post-pandemic policy on China as “a step too far.”

Then there is the question of how Trump deals with Taiwan – a potential flashpoint long seen as among the most likely triggers for a US-China conflict.

An ‘insurance company’

Biden repeatedly broke with purposeful American ambiguity to say that the US would defend Taiwan if China invaded the island. He also approved funding for the first-ever military aid to the island as Beijing ramped up its military pressure.

In contrast, the president-elect earlier this year appeared to undercut US relations with Taipei, claiming in a Bloomberg interview that Washington was “no different than an insurance company” for the island and said Taiwan should pay the US for defense. In October, he told the Wall Street Journal he would impose 150% to 200% tariffs if China went “into Taiwan.”

But how the Trump administration would react in the event of a contingency remains unknown. Trump’s choice for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio, is a staunch advocate for the island, and his vice presidential pick JD Vance has argued that the US supplying Ukraine with air defense systems could hurt its ability to aid Taiwan’s defense if China were to attack.

That argument, however, has observers in Asia concerned.

Many in the region believe how Trump handles the war in Ukraine will send a critical message to Russia’s partners like China, Iran and North Korea – a set of nations some in Washington fear could harden into a dangerous axis. Those concerns may be particularly acute when it comes to China, which has likely been watching closely as it looks to its own intentions in Taiwan.

Trump has suggested he would end the Ukraine war “in 24 hours” and called for an “immediate ceasefire and negotiations” – a position that jives with Beijing’s stated stance on the war, which the US and its allies have criticized as being beneficial to Russia.

“I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The World is waiting!” Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social earlier this month.

And what that rhetoric means in practice could have significant ramifications for Asia.

“If Russia is allowed to walk away with looking like it’s got a win from this … that then cements this relationship (between Russia and China),” said Robert Ward, director of geo-economics and strategy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in the UK.

“And Xi Jinping will be watching this very closely, watching – how credible is Western deterrence? How credible is NATO? How willing is the West to actually put skin in the game in a conflict – and that of course relates back to Taiwan.”