Editor's note: Zhou Wenxing is an assistant professor at Nanjing University's School of Government and a research fellow at the University's Huazhi Institute for Global Governance. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price introduced new guidelines for U.S. government interactions with the Taiwan authorities in a press statement on April 9. According to Price, the newly released guidelines "liberalize guidance on contacts with Taiwan," and "provide clarity through the Executive Branch on effective implementation of our 'one-China' policy." 

These guidelines enable more U.S. engagement with the island by encouraging working-level meetings with Taiwanese officials in federal buildings or at Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, the island of Taiwan's representative office in America, U.S. State Department spokesman said on Friday. 

While restricting U.S. interactions with the Taiwan region to the unofficial level and setting some "guard rails" so as not to complicate U.S.' "one-China" policy, the new guidance has undoubtedly marked a significant step towards the violation of the "one-China" policy that previous bipartisan administrations since Richard Nixon have endorsed.  

The former Donald Trump administration is clearly an exception. Determined to launch and win the alleged new Cold War against China, the U.S. government played the Taiwan card rampantly from 2017 to 2021. For example, the Department of State had approved arms sales to the island of Taiwan worth more than $18 billion last year. Congress also played a progressive role, proposing many new Taiwan-related legislation, in which many acts advocate for the so-called "defense partnership" with the island. 

President Joe Biden is believed to be different from his predecessor in terms of U.S. policy toward China and on the Taiwan issue. Biden and his foreign policy aides have manifested that the new administration is poised to compete with China. But they also emphasized that they do not want confrontation with China, adding that conflict is not inevitable. Moreover, President Biden claimed more than once that his administration is ready to work with China "when it's in America's interests to do so."  

Nevertheless, the new guidelines, which were made following a review as stipulated in the so-called Taiwan Assurance Act that was signed into law by President Trump in December 2020, just broke President Biden's commitment to both pursuing cooperation and avoiding conflict with China. 

Firstly, the new guidance meddling with China's domestic affairs by further "hollowing" U.S. "one-China" policy has cast a shadow over the prospect of cooperation with China. This would hinder the Biden administration from achieving its foreign policy blueprint of "Make America Lead Again." 

To regain its leadership on global affairs, the U.S. must be competent in properly handling regional and global issues, including controlling pandemic, climate change, economic growth, and regional security. But the Biden administration knows it clearly that without China's cooperation it is impossible to solve those tricky issues, given China's growing political, economic as well as political influence. 

More importantly, the new policy measure indicates that the U.S. government has been doubling down efforts on "strategic clarity" vis-à-vis "strategic ambiguity" over its "security commitment" to Taiwan. This is likely, on the one hand, to send out wrong signals to the Taiwan authorities and embolden them to seek separatism. 

On the other hand, the U.S. seems to underestimate China's firm resolve and ability to safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The collusion between the U.S. and the Taiwan region at the cost of China's national interests reminds us of the recent memory of 1995-96 Taiwan Strait's crisis. 

In other words, the new guidelines are bound to further destabilize the volatile region across the Taiwan Strait that has already witnessed much instability and "cold peace" over the past few years since the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities took office in 2016. Should the DPP authorities take any radical agendas for "independence," the U.S. is very like to be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait. 

In a nutshell, the new U.S. guidelines dedicated to deepening interactions with the Taiwan region to serve its interest in the near term would just hurt its interests in the long term. Provocative moves as such are neither conductive to a prospect of seeking cooperation nor one of avoiding conflict with China.  

The Biden administration failed to escape the foreign policy "traps" set by the Trump administration. Rather, it is following the latter's lead on the Taiwan issue, to a large extent. If it really wants to "Make America Lead Again," the Biden administration should abandon policy legacies left behind by its predecessor by reassessing and reversing these policies on the Taiwan issue. 

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