“The sad fact is that without China signing off on any of those agreements (FTAs), they would never get to the bargaining table — not without China’s tacit agreement. We all pretend that there is no elephant in the room, but there is an elephant in the room and if we ignore it, it will hit us with its trunk”
“Clearly, the United States has for years been sending signals to Taiwan that it would prefer greater economic integration between [China] and Taiwan for reasons of its own”
Charles Freeman - academic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (
CSIS) in Washington contributing his own mixed signals to the general morass of non-policy on the Taiwan Strait situation.
