The U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan and China's Cooperation in the North Korea Nuclear Crisis

Abstract

Scholars in the U.S. and China have mentioned a likelihood that both states use the Taiwan issue and the North Korean nuclear crisis as a means to force each other. However, previous literatures never test this hypothesis through empirical analyses. This study attempts to explore whether the U.S. arms sales toward Taiwan let China to make a concession in the North Korean issue. It is a novel attempt to prove that they are related to each other as a part of the competition for a hegemony position between the US and China in Northeast Asia, away from the existing research that has been analyzed as a separate issue. The empirical analyses demonstrate that the U.S. arms sales toward Taiwan make China to cooperate in the North Korean nuclear issue.