It’s hard to find a more prime property in Washington, D.C., than the Twin Oaks estate. Sitting on a little more than 18 acres in the city’s Cleveland Park neighborhood and named after the two imposing trees that frame its main entrance, the property is slightly bigger than the White House compound and is the largest privately owned estate in the U.S. capital.
The reason that it’s considered privately owned is because the owner—the government of Taiwan—hasn’t had official diplomatic ties with the United States since 1979, when Washington and the United Nations recognized the People’s Republic of China and its government in Beijing as China’s sole legal representative worldwide. The Taiwan-U.S. relationship has nonetheless remained close, albeit unofficially, and Twin Oaks today serves as a de facto embassy for a de facto ambassador (who is still not permitted to live on the premises) whose job is to manage a de facto diplomatic partnership that continues to grow in importance for both sides.
In early July, two days before the United States celebrated its Independence Day, I visited the estate to interview its newest host, Alexander Tah-ray Yui. Yui took over as Taiwan’s representative to the United States in January after a stint as the island’s vice minister for foreign affairs in Taipei, swapping cities with his predecessor, Hsiao Bi-khim, who is now Taiwan’s vice president. Toward the end of a wide-ranging conversation that covered both U.S. presidential candidates, semiconductors, military aid, and China, I asked Yui about animals.
Hsiao, when asked in 2020 how she would counter China’s belligerent “wolf warrior” diplomacy in Washington, famously dubbed herself a “cat warrior”—an homage to her four cats but also a nod to feline flexibility, agility, lovability, and independence. So, I asked, what animal would Yui use to describe his style?
“Well, I was born in the year of the dragon … I don’t know, ‘dragon warrior’?” he said, letting out a big laugh that somewhat contradicted the fearsome creature he’d chosen.
But he puts far more stock in the “warrior” part than whatever animal happens to come before it. When it comes to dealing with China, he said, “The military aspect, deterrence, defense, maybe in the last few years has become more eminent, but for many decades … the melees and the battles occurred at the diplomatic front,” with Beijing pushing Taipei out of international organizations and muscling in on its bilateral relationships.
“We are suit-wearing warriors,” he added, with another chuckle, “but the battle is very brutal. So call me any name, but dragon sounds fine.”
The Chinese delegation to the United Nations sits for the first time at U.N. headquarters in New York City on Nov. 15, 1971, after the People’s Republic of China was integrated as a member and joined the Security Council. The shift led to the departure of Taiwan, which had represented China at the United Nations since 1949. Sam Schulman/AFP via Getty Images
Yui’s diplomatic education began at home—his father represented Taiwan’s government abroad in the 1970s and the 1980s, when it was displaced from the United Nations Security Council in favor of the communist People’s Republic of China and lost most of its official bilateral relationships in the aftermath.
“I think for a diplomat, it was just horrible times,” Yui said. “We were sort of orphaned, isolated internationally. I can even say it was sort of an apartheid because we just didn’t belong to anyone.”
For a time, Yui wanted to join the military, but his father persuaded him that the real battle was elsewhere. “My father told me the first line of defense nowadays is actually diplomatic—our missions, our embassies; we face constant direct skirmishes, direct battles.” So Yui followed him into the foreign service.
In some ways, Yui’s job may be easier than what his father faced. Taiwan may still only have a dozen official diplomatic allies (it lost the small Pacific island of Nauru earlier this year), but its unofficial relationships are strong and getting stronger as more countries come to see China as a threat.
“Many countries have recognized that Taiwan is a trustworthy partner,” he said. “Taiwan is an economic powerhouse. It plays by the rules. We’re like-minded in the values that we share and we cherish, so more and more countries are more willing to deal with Taiwan separately from China.”
That’s especially true of Washington, which has introduced dozens of pieces of Taiwan-related legislation in the past year and has made around 15 weapons sales to Taiwan under President Joe Biden. Yui expects that to continue regardless of who occupies the White House next year following November’s presidential election.
“I’ve been asked that a lot,” he said in response to my question about former U.S. President Donald Trump’s seeming reluctance to support traditional U.S. allies and partners. “A lot of the breakthroughs for Taiwan happened during President Trump’s first administration—a lot of limitations that used to be placed were deactivated or softened.”
For instance, the Trump administration approved the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan in 2019, the first time that the United States had sold new fighter jets to the island since 1992. And just 10 days before the end of Trump’s term, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he was lifting long-standing restrictions on contacts between U.S. and Taiwanese officials.
Alexander Tah-ray Yui arrives to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on March 6. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
U.S. support for Taiwan remains “bipartisan, bicameral, and quite widespread,” Yui said. “Obviously, every president has his own characteristics, his own way of leading the country,” Yui added, “but the U.S.-Taiwan relationship, generally speaking, still we are very optimistic that it will go upwards.”
However, Trump fanned fears about his willingness to continue supporting Taiwan in an interview published two weeks after I sat down with Yui, with the Republican presidential candidate telling Bloomberg that the island should pay the United States more for its defense and complaining that “they did take about 100 percent of our chip business.”
Taiwan is the world’s most dominant player in the production of the wafer-thin semiconductor chips that now power everything from washing machines to ballistic missiles. The island produces 92 percent of the world’s most advanced chips, most of them through one of its biggest companies, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Taiwan’s outsized influence on such a key part of the global digital economy has created a so-called “silicon shield” that it hopes will ensure that countries come to its defense in the event of an attack by China, or even possibly prevent China from attacking in the first place.
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But Trump’s complaint about Taiwan’s dominance of chip production is one that he has made before, and Yui sought to rebuff those concerns when we spoke. “We’re actually partners—the United States is very good at chip design, and we’re very good at manufacturing,” he said. He also touted TSMC’s $65 billion investment to build three new chip factories in Arizona as a sign that Taiwan was actually supporting the U.S. chip industry.
The United States’ CHIPS and Science Act aims to bring more chip manufacturing back to U.S. shores, and similar initiatives across Europe and Asia are trying to create their own domestic semiconductor supply chains. TSMC has, in fact, been a major beneficiary of those initiatives, announcing several new factories in Arizona, Germany, and Japan—bolstered by tens of billions of dollars in government subsidies. Some in Taiwan—not least TSMC founder and former CEO Morris Chang—fear that spreading TSMC’s crown jewels too far and wide will make Taiwan less valuable and thus more vulnerable.
Yui—who told an audience during a semiconductor event at the Senate in April that “Taiwan is not only TSMC”—sees it differently. Building chip factories around the world, in his view, strengthens Taiwan and gives it the global economic partnerships that it needs in the absence of official diplomatic recognition.
“Because once the production is in other countries, we become part of a supply chain with those countries,” he said, drawing a parallel with Japanese carmakers that have plants in the United States. “If Japan were to be invaded, the United States would say: ‘Well, it does affect me because Japan has a lot of plants and a lot of jobs are at stake.’ So actually we become more relevant because we’re partners.”
It’s a win-win, too. “The United States is happy because they’re having local production, but we’re happy because it’s our company producing it at a profit,” Yui added.
Members of Taiwan’s armed forces hold drills to show combat readiness at a military base in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on Jan. 11, 2023. Annabelle Chih/Getty Images
In response to Trump’s comments to Bloomberg about Taiwan paying more for its defense, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States told Foreign Policy: “As the threat of military coercion increases, Taiwan is doing its part by actively strengthening deterrence capabilities with the support of the United States under the Taiwan Relations Act.”
The open question of whether U.S. troops would defend the island in the event of an attack from China has become much less theoretical in recent years. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 awoke many U.S. policymakers to the potential for China to try something similar. Beijing has always seen Taiwan as a “renegade province” that is an inalienable part of China and must eventually be reunited with the mainland. CIA Director William Burns’s assertion that Chinese President Xi Jinping has told his military to be ready to retake Taiwan by 2027 has now become gospel in Washington.
Yui downplayed that deadline. “I think it’s symbolic, because 2027 is the 100th anniversary of [China’s] People’s Liberation Army,” he said, but he added that there is no doubt that China’s military is increasing its capabilities at an “astounding” pace.
Xi himself has dismissed the 2027 deadline, according to some accounts, and reportedly even told a senior European official that the United States was goading China into invading Taiwan.
Yui laughed off the latter assertion. “That’s like saying: ‘I hit you because you wore a T-shirt I don’t like—you enticed me to hit you.’ Don’t try to blame somebody else because of something you’re doing,” he said. “They’ve been changing the red lines or the status quo on Taiwan, and they’re the ones changing the goal posts all the time.”
And as Ukraine and its supporters have repeatedly warned that Russia won’t stop its aggression even if it does successfully annex the country, Yui issued a similar warning to the rest of the world about China’s ambitions vis-à-vis Taiwan.
“Their sights are not focused on Taiwan alone,” he said. “We are getting in the way—we’re sort of like the first door that they have to break open so that they can go out and do whatever they want.”
Yui arrives on Capitol Hill, in Washington on March 6. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Yui’s ethos, outlook, and priorities all stem from his belief in democratic values. He’s very focused on sharpening the contrast in the global consciousness between Taiwan’s democracy and China’s autocracy, showing that there is an alternative for the Chinese people.
The optimism that accompanied China’s admission to the World Trade Organization a little more than two decades ago—seen at the time as a sign that it would become a responsible global player—has dissipated, with countries around the world now realizing that Beijing is more intent on circumventing the rules than following them, according to Yui. He added that a similar shift has taken place in its relationship with Taipei, with the days of “prospering together” through Taiwanese factories on Chinese soil giving way to a “very aggressive attitude” by the Chinese government.
“What changed was, I think, the Chinese leadership. There’s been more attention to how the Chinese Communist Party maintains its grasp of power than anything else,” Yui said. “That’s why there’s also some urgency for Xi Jinping to try to take Taiwan now,” he added, because its continued existence as a thriving democracy “will hinder his legitimacy as the ruler of China—that’s another reason we are a threat to them. That’s their existential threat, because we are offering a different choice, a way of life for the Chinese people.”
Yui’s mission is to impress upon the rules-based world order—a phrase he used repeatedly in our conversation—that Taiwan is a fellow democracy and a valuable contributor. “It’s a relentless effort to tell the international community that we are sovereign, independent; there are 23 million people who are not part of the international system, who yearn to be included, and that our rights should be respected, and that we’re also very willing to share our burden of responsibility in world affairs. And this has been what I’ve been doing,” he said. “The burden that we face in our diplomatic work is a very aggressive Chinese [government] trying to do everything possible to suffocate our international oxygen. But we’ll do what we can to keep ourselves. It’s an existential battle.”
In his estimation, it’s working. “Happily and luckily, most countries—albeit lacking diplomatic recognition—recognize who we are: We are a thriving democracy,” he said. “Fortunately, the trend is that we are being treated as we are.”