Taiwan 2024-2025: Constraint, adaptation, and the Cross-strait equilibrium

This article analyses political and security developments in Taiwan during the 2024- 2025 biennium, focusing on the interaction between domestic political fragmentation, evolving relations with the United States, and the consolidation of Chinese military coercion in the Taiwan Strait. It argues that the transition to divided government produced a structurally weakened presidency, in which legislative obstruction and constitutional contestation entrenched a persistent condition of governance under constraint. Against this domestic backdrop, the article examines the recalibration of Taiwan-US relations in an increasingly uncertain and transactional environment, where established practices of symbolic management – most notably presidential tran- sit diplomacy – proved more vulnerable to disruption than in previous cycles, while leadership change within the Kuomintang introduced additional layers of cross-Strait signalling under conditions of institutional fragility. The article further traces the evolution of Chinese military activity around Taiwan, highlighting the shift from episodic signalling to routinised drills and grey-zone operations as a stabilised in- strument of pressure. It also considers how Taipei has begun to recalibrate elements of its external projection and domestic political agenda in response to evolving rela- tions with Washington under Trump 2.0 and to the increasingly assertive strategic environment shaped by Beijing. Taken together, developments during the period un- der review point not to strategic realignment, but to the reproduction of constraint, as domestic political vulnerability, uncertain US signalling, and sustained Chinese coercion interacted to reinforce a condition of managed but unresolved structural vulnerability within the regional order.