How about a tradeoff between the US and China?? I mean, you take Afghanistan and China takes Taiwan...
atimes.com
Excerpt:
However, all that occurred at a time when no bilateral economic force was at work. Now the political pressure on Taiwan is even more significant as industries are looking forward to developing the potentially huge mainland market and when young Taiwanese professionals dream of a well paid job in Shanghai. In a way, each bomb dropped by the US on Afghanistan - an action that receives approval, albeit wishy-washy, from Beijing - tells the Taiwanese government the US has less of a stake in defending Taiwan.
Furthermore, there is the sandwich argument. The US has a presence in the east in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Now it is also in the west; in Pakistan, where its re-entry was also facilitated by China, and it will be in Afghanistan and in some of the ex-Soviet Central Asian republics. It could turn out that, in return for China's support for the US bombing in Afghanistan, China gets squeezed by the US on both sides. This simple prospect could well destabilize the political environment in China, where anti-Americanism could be played up to oppose the on-going political reforms motivated by Jiang's theory of the Three Representatives.
But this is not happening. What is taking place seems to be very different: a possible crumbling of the potential wall of containment around China. Japan's new overtures are fundamental because they open the possibility of a strong partnership between the two largest economies in the region. Such a partnership could re-launch the faltering Asian economies and give a ray of hope to stagnating Japan.
On its west, China is keeping good relations with Pakistan and is trying to further mend fences with India. Moreover, in the following months it is possible that Beijing could come up with some form of deeper involvement in Afghanistan that could give it a say in a future Afghanistan settlement.
Thus, the Afghan war and the meeting between Jiang and Koizumi are contributing to shaping a new political geography of Asia, where the US presence is broadened but not at the expenses of China, which is no longer considered a threat.
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