Opinion

How Taiwan copes with the cross-strait challenge from a hostile giant

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The Taiwanese government has its own cabinet-level agency, the Mainland Affairs Council, dedicated to its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party regime in Beijing. The agency is separate from the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Before arriving on this island about 100 miles off China’s southeastern coast last week, I assumed that the agency had been established because Taiwan and China interact across the Taiwan Strait in such myriad ways — culturally, socially and economically, if not always diplomatically — that their dealings were just too extensive to put within the Foreign Ministry.