By Sarah Cao
In the opening seminar of Trinity Term 2026, the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme welcomed Ambassador John T. Hennessey-Niland, Director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University, to the China Centre's Ho Tim Seminar Room. Drawing on a 35-year career with the U.S. government and a particular focus on the Indo-Pacific region, Ambassador Hennessey-Niland offered what he called "brief observations" on four contemporary developments shaping the cross-Strait status quo: the Iran war, opposition leader Cheng Li-wun's recent visit to Beijing, President Lai Ching-te's Africa trip culminating in Eswatini, and the upcoming U.S.–PRC summit. As a recently retired career diplomat, the ambassador prefaced his remarks by noting that the views expressed were his own and did not represent those of the U.S. government.
AMB Hennessey-Niland's engagement with Taiwan is deeply rooted in his diplomatic experience. His 2021 official visit to Taiwan, which followed the contentious Anchorage Summit and a period of heightened U.S.–PRC tensions, marked the beginning of a sustained interest in cross-Strait dynamics that has shaped his subsequent analytical work.
The Iran War as an "Action-Forcing Event"
AMB Hennessey-Niland opened his analysis with the Iran war, characterising it as an "action-forcing event" that has compelled difficult choices in Beijing and Washington. Of particular concern, he noted, is the role of PLA/PRC-supplied Iranian defence systems, whose performance in active conflict has provided observable data points with implications for future iterations of PLA military capabilities. The conflict has, in this sense, served as a stress test for Chinese defence exports and a window into the trajectory of Chinese military planning.
Hennessey-Niland described the cross-Strait implications as a "mixed bag." On one hand, U.S. willingness to act unilaterally and decisively in the Middle East may reinforce credibility in Asia. On the other, the protracted demand for American focus and resources in CENTCOM continues a familiar pattern. This recurring pull complicates Washington's capacity to maintain sustained attention on Taiwan, an asymmetry from which the PRC stands to benefit.
He further argued that diminished U.S. focus on Taiwan would not be a strictly bilateral matter. "U.S. doesn't just mean the U.S.," he observed; American attentiveness to Taiwan often shapes whether and how third countries choose to engage with Taipei. Conversely, PRC silence on Iran, and the conspicuous absence of active support during the conflict, may give pause to other states, particularly hedging actors and PRC client states weighing the reliability of Beijing as a partner under stress.
Cheng Li-wun's Visit to Beijing and the Domestic Political Backdrop
Turning to Cheng Li-wun's visit to Beijing, situated the trip within the broader evolution of cross-Strait relations and the internal dynamics of the Kuomintang. Public opinion polling, he reminded the audience, continues to show a strong Taiwanese preference for the status quo, even as President Lai Ching-te governs with a minority position in the legislature. The combination of a divided domestic political environment and unsettled cross-Strait expectations means that opposition outreach to Beijing carries weight beyond its immediate symbolism.
Echoing a theme that ran through the seminar, AMB Hennessey-Niland urged analysts to focus not on the most likely scenarios but on the "least likely, more dangerous" ones. Stability, he suggested, can lull observers into underestimating the structural fragility of arrangements that depend on continued goodwill among multiple actors with diverging long-term aims.
President Lai's Africa Trip and the "Salami Slicing" of Diplomatic Space
The third development the ambassador examined was President Lai's once-cancelled but ultimately successful Africa trip, including the visit to Eswatini, one of Taiwan's few remaining formal diplomatic allies. The episode, he argued, illustrated the increasing fragility of Taiwan's access to the world. Initial difficulties produced what he described as a Ministry of Foreign Affairs embarrassment before MOFA recovered to deliver a successful trip.
More striking, however, was the new tactic adopted by Beijing: pressure on neighbouring countries to prohibit overland flight access, thereby constraining Taiwan's high-level travel routes without directly confronting the destination state. Hennessey-Niland likened this approach to "salami slicing": incremental, low-cost actions aimed at narrowing Taiwan's international space without provoking a coordinated response. The inducements or coercion applied to the three implicated countries remain opaque, but the precedent itself is significant: a "newsworthy [development] with potential long-term impact." It suggests Beijing is willing to instrumentalise third parties to shape Taiwan's diplomatic geography, a pattern with strategic implications well beyond a single trip.
The Upcoming U.S.–PRC Summit
AMB Hennessey-Niland devoted particular attention to the upcoming summit between Presidents Trump and Xi in Beijing, an event surrounded, in his words, by uncertainty even with only a week to go. He described informal "plane spotting" as one indicator of summit readiness, and noted that cancellation could not be ruled out.
Two anxieties dominate the view from Taipei. The first is the prospect of the Taiwan issue being "parked" at the summit, neither addressed nor resolved, leaving cross-Strait questions hostage to the broader trajectory of U.S.–PRC bargaining. The second, more acute concern is that President Trump's well-known preference for deal-making could turn Taiwan into "a chip in a grand bargain," particularly in a context where the PRC may use its "good offices" to influence Iran in ways advantageous to Washington. The ambassador framed this not as a prediction but as a structural risk that Taipei must take seriously.
He also observed that perceptions of Trump in Beijing remain somewhat confused (an observation, he noted, that is shared in many capitals), and that this confusion may yield a more cautious summit than headlines suggest. At the same time, Beijing's increasingly assertive "we're number one" narrative carries its own risks, raising expectations that may prove difficult to manage.
Q&A: A Wider Aperture on Indo-Pacific Strategy
The discussion that followed expanded the seminar's geographic and thematic scope considerably. Several participants raised the question of the PRC's apparent restraint vis-à-vis Iran, which the ambassador suggested was unsurprising and broadly consistent with Beijing's similarly measured posture toward Russia in Ukraine. Interagency dynamics within the PRC, including the weight of financial ties and the value Beijing places on stable economic relationships, help explain this reticence.
A substantial portion of the discussion turned to China's engagement in the Pacific Islands, an area in which the ambassador has clear expertise. He described China–Taiwan competition in the Pacific Islands Forum and in Palau; the capture and entanglement of local officials; and the use of "wolf-warrior" diplomacy alongside economic coercion, particularly through travel and tourism leverage. He also discussed cybercrime networks engaged in what he called "business process offshoring" targeting PRC citizens, the role of criminal triads across the Indo-Pacific, and the pattern recognition emerging from PRC–U.S. interactions through private sector and economic instruments in the region.
The conversation also touched on potential collaboration between the pan-blue camp and the U.S. government, with the ambassador emphasising that any such engagement must be premised on respect for democratic outcomes "whatever they may be." He further highlighted the recent Bush–NTU programme, anchored in the southwestern United States, which seeks to develop Taiwan expertise as a field meriting particular focus rather than a subset of China studies; a signed agreement and a conference in November are expected to deepen this initiative. He also noted the texture of Texas–Taiwan relations, including a Texas representative in Taipei and the regularity of high-level transits through Texas.
Concluding Reflections
Taken together, the four developments surveyed by Ambassador Hennessey-Niland point to a status quo that is durable in name but increasingly stretched in practice. The Iran war reshapes calculations about Chinese military capability and American attention; opposition diplomacy and minority government in Taipei complicate the domestic backdrop; novel pressure tactics in third countries narrow Taiwan's international corridor; and a Trump–Xi summit promises either consequential bargaining or, perhaps more worryingly, the deferral of the cross-Strait question altogether.
The ambassador's analysis suggests that the cross-Strait status quo is best understood not as a fixed equilibrium but as the cumulative product of many smaller decisions across many capitals. Maintaining it will require sustained attention from Washington, vigilance in Taipei, and a willingness among partners and hedging states to weigh the costs of closer alignment with Beijing. In a season of summits, wars, and salami slices, the "interesting times" of the seminar's title may be less a passing moment than a description of the operating environment for the foreseeable future.
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The seminar was hosted by Dr. Bo-jiun Jing, Senior Research Fellow and Programme Manager in Taiwan Studies at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies. It forms part of the Oxford Taiwan Studies Seminar Series and this recap was produced in partnership between the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme and St Antony’s International Review (STAIR).
