Taiwan is on alert for China to carry out military exercises after the inauguration of President-elect Lai Ching-te later this month Reuters is reporting. According to the news agency, China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has a strong dislike of Lai. Both Lai and Taiwan’s current president Tsai Ing-wen reject Beijing's sovereignty claims. Lai’s inauguration is set for May 20.
John W. Tai is a professorial lecturer at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. He is also a Course Coordinator (McColm consultant) at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State, where he teaches courses on China and Taiwan. For nearly 12 years, he supported the U.S. intelligence community as an open-source analyst. Earlier in his career, John had served as an East Asia analyst at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He had also advised the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth. He is the author of Building Civil Society in Authoritarian China (Springer, 2015) and has written on China’s technological, political, and economic developments, China's maritime strategy, Taiwan’s military diplomacy and its external relations, and South Korea's relations with the United States and China.
Tai can offer some assessments of the Taiwan situation from a strategic perspective, noting the regional dynamics and factors in US-China relations that may impact the situation in the Taiwan Strait.
If you would like to speak with Prof. Tai, please contact GW Media Relations at [email protected].
-GW-