ICYMI: KHANNA IN BOSTON GLOBE ON TAIWAN, CHINA, AND STRENGTHING OUR MANUFACTURING BASE

Washington, D.C. — In case you missed it, Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) published an op-ed in The Boston Globe today on how the United States can keep the peace between Taiwan and China and strengthen our own manufacturing base.

Since arriving in Congress, Khanna has worked to restore American manufacturing and technology leadership and is a co-author of the CHIPS and Science Act to onshore semiconductor manufacturing.

Khanna serves on the House Armed Services Committee as ranking member of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies and Information Systems (CITI) and is a member of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.

Full text of the op-ed can be found here and below.

How US can keep the peace between Taiwan and China

By: Ro Khanna

America has a dual challenge with Taiwan: We must keep the peace between Taiwan and China and strengthen our own manufacturing base. This was my takeaway after leading a bipartisan delegation to Taiwan last week. We met with political leaders such as President Tsai Ing-wen and Kuomintang Party chair Eric Chu and business titans such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company founder Morris Chang.

When we landed in Taipei, the sad news broke that former president Jimmy Carter was entering hospice care. Carter created the One China Policy, establishing formal diplomatic relations with and recognizing the People's Republic of China as the legal government of China, and he signed the Taiwan Relations Act, allowing for continued, informal relations with Taiwan, while stating that the United States should provide defense weapons to ensure Taiwan can protect itself.

These policies, memorialized by Carter and fashioned by former president Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, have served American interests by helping to preserve peace and expanding engagement. While there were many economic benefits for American companies and consumers, we ignored the cost to the working class and factory towns. The US focus must now be to rebalance our economic relationship and reduce the trade deficit with China. As the United States voices support for Taiwan's democracy and provides the island with the necessary weapons to defend itself, we must also reaffirm the One China Policy. That means avoiding calling for Taiwan's independence.

The United States must listen to Taiwan's leaders about how to avoid war. These leaders have lived through the ups and downs of the Chinese Communist Party and have survived through the decades. What I heard time and again from legislators there was that a framework of national defense and engagement is needed. Taiwan will never compete one-on-one with the People's Liberation Army. So to defend itself, it will need to invest more in asymmetric weapons to deter China from invading.

We've seen this strategy work successfully in Ukraine thus far, where the smaller military used asymmetric weapons like drones and stinger missiles against a larger and more conventional Russian force. To do this in Taiwan though, America must fast-track providing the $18 billion of harpoons, stingers, javelins, and HIMARS requested of us. At the same time, the United States should support Taiwan's engagement with Beijing to reduce tensions.

I was struck by the convergence of views by both of Taiwan's major political parties on this issue. Chu, head of a party with historically stronger ties to Beijing, advocated for increasing the national defense of Taiwan. He preferred the status quo to unifying with the People's Republic of China. The Kuomintang Party even supported Tsai's decision to increase conscription from four months to a year for Taiwanese 18-year-olds.

Tsai's party, the Democratic Progressive Party, is known for standing up to Beijing and for a stronger Taiwanese identity. She told us that while Taiwan is largely Chinese, it has a rich history of indigenous peoples and different races. Nonetheless, like Chu, she placed importance on engagement with Beijing. The bottom line is that the United States should engage with the KMT and the DPP to help support its defense, while encouraging constructive conversations with China to understand red lines and minimize the risk of military conflict.

This trip also left me with more insights on how to revitalize the US manufacturing base. We met with the godfather of Taiwan's semiconductor industry, 91-year-old Morris Chang. Ninety percent of advanced chips go through Taiwan, largely thanks to him. The sad truth is that the United States could have had this industry boom. Chang is an American citizen and was educated at MIT and Stanford. But he was passed over for CEO of Texas Instruments in the 1980s, possibly because of his Asian heritage and US indifference to manufacturing in that period. So he moved to Taiwan and with the help of the government, built TSMC. Chang's story reminded me of W. Edwards Deming who was rejected by corporate America after World War II and moved to Japan, where he built its auto industry into a powerhouse.

Chang's story highlights the importance of immigrants and the need to keep and attract technology talent. To be the predominant manufacturing superpower, the United States needs to welcome immigrants and attract entrepreneurs and technologists to build new companies and factories. This will require building on the success of the Chips and Science Act — which I coauthored to onshore semiconductor manufacturing in America — with a Chips Act 2.0 and a 3.0 to better focus on legacy chips for our cars, refrigerators, and dryers. At the same time, we need a moon shot for other industries like steel, aluminum, and paper to make things in America again. I have called this a new economic patriotism.

Taiwan presents an opportunity for American policy makers. We can keep the peace if we have a policy of supporting Taiwan's defense while encouraging talks with China — something that all parties in Taiwan are committed to seeking. And we can also revitalize our domestic manufacturing by investing in key industries and encouraging the next Morris Chang to build here in America.

US Representative Ro Khanna represents California's 17th Congressional District.

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