A Path Forward: Taiwan's New Southbound Policy amidst the US-China Trade War

This study reviewed the origin of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative(BRI) and how Chinese state-owned companies help build infrastructure programs for the targeted countries. The study also illustrated how Tsai Ing-wen's New Southbound Policy(NSP) is different from former President Lee Teng-hui's ＂Southbound Policy＂. The propose of NSP is deepening Taiwan's engagement in southeast Asia, South Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Subsequently Tsai's administration inaugurated 5 flagship programs and 3 prospective areas so as to reinforce the relationships with the 18 partner countries in 2016. President Tsai further proposed that they must come up with more vision-orientated and forward-looking policies in 2019. This study explored the effects of the BRI and the NSP have on the ASEAN nations' diplomatic, as well as trading relations. ASEAN nations used to adopt a hedging strategy to manage both the US and China sides' influences. ASEAN nations believed that the NSP's human resource educational programs will never rival the BRI's infrastructure plans. However, after the waves of broken windows effects caused by Malaysia, Trump's Indo-pacific strategy, and US-China trade war, the scenario has gradually changed the current political, economic and military equilibrium status of Asia-pacific and Indo-pacific regions. Creating great opportunities for the NSP to quietly build up more platforms in order to break through the encirclement of the BRI. This study suggests that the further version of NSP will adopt a more proactive approach that'll be equipped with the competing visions of the trading geostrategy. Besides enforcing diplomatic relations, the NSP should strengthen the connection with seaport cities, Taiwan business, and industrial clusters and modify the priority items according to the needs of different countries and localities.補正完