For “low-profile” read “secret.” Except that the meeting between Jed Royal of the United States—who does double duty as “the Acting Assistant Secretary of War for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs and the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs,” according to the renamed war.gov—and Hsu Szu-chen, at the time a deputy security adviser of the Republic of China, is not so secret anymore.
The Financial Times reports that the two mid-tier defense officials met in Anchorage, Alaska “days before President Xi Jinping flaunted China’s military might to the world at a parade attended by fellow strongmen” (Financial Times, September 4, 2025).
The talks came months after a Washington meeting between more senior American and Taiwanese officials was cancelled, partly over concerns that it could derail a potential bilateral meeting between President Donald Trump and the Chinese president….
“The Trump administration may be trying to thread the needle between assuring Taiwan and keeping the possibility of a trade deal and summit with China alive,” said Amanda Hsiao, China director at Eurasia Group….
One US official said the decision to meet in Alaska was a deliberate attempt to make the talks less high-profile. But he said the composition of the US team was partly due to scheduling constraints on its part….
Heino Klinck, an Asia security expert who served as top defence official for Taiwan in Trump’s first administration, said frequent senior-level meetings with Taiwan were critical to the US national interest. “When juxtaposed with the triumvirate of tyranny [China, Russia and North Korea] reviewing a military parade in Tiananmen Square, the justification for such US-Taiwan engagements is clear.”
No news about what if anything of import was said at the urgently under-the-radar meeting.
It doesn’t really matter whether “scheduling constraints” provide an extra reason why more-important U.S. officials were not part of the Anchorage meeting if an earlier almost-meeting that would have featured more-important officials was canceled because it “could derail a potential bilateral meeting between President Donald Trump and the Chinese president.”
In the 1970s, the U.S. diplomatically demoted the Republic of China for fear of derailing bilateral meetings between top U.S. officials and the top butchers of Beijing. It’s a bad habit.
