{"id":70680,"date":"2025-04-02T09:02:21","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T00:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/apr\/02\/pete-hegseth-indicates-us-backing-taiwan"},"modified":"2025-04-02T09:02:21","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T00:02:21","slug":"hegseth-indicates-us-backing-for-taiwan-but-it-is-transactional-trump-who-has-the-final-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=70680","title":{"rendered":"Hegseth indicates US backing for Taiwan \u2013 but it is transactional Trump who has the final word"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Defence secretary\u2019s trip to Asia shows the Trump administration is engaged with the region, but analysts warn Taipei to tread carefully <\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday China\u2019s military <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/apr\/01\/china-launches-surprise-military-drills-around-taiwan\">launched joint drills around Taiwan<\/a>, sending ships, planes and some bizarre propaganda videos across the strait to both warn and punish Taiwan\u2019s government over what Beijing calls \u201cseparatist activity\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The purported provocation was recent assertiveness by Taiwan\u2019s president, Lai Ching-te, who in March designated China a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/mar\/14\/taiwan-president-lai-ching-te-china-hostile-force-speech\">\u201cforeign hostile force\u201d<\/a> and announced 17 measures to counter its espionage and influence operations.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/apr\/02\/pete-hegseth-indicates-us-backing-taiwan\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Defence secretary\u2019s trip to Asia shows the Trump administration is engaged with the region, but analysts warn Taipei to tread carefully On Tuesday China\u2019s military launched joint drills around Taiwan, sending ships, planes and some bizarre propaganda v&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1643,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,3277,74,554,47,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-pete-hegseth","category-taiwan","category-trump-administration","category-us-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70681,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70680\/revisions\/70681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}