As US-China Relations Sour, Taiwan's Value as a 'Chess Piece' May Rise

choi

Shirley Tay, As US-China Relations Sour, Taiwan's Value as a 'Chess Piece' May Rise. CNBC, June 11, 2019.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/11/ ... piece-may-rise.html

Note:
(a) The surname Tay may be English or "Jewish (from Poland) * * * occupational name for a tea merchant, from central Yiddish tay 'tea.' " Dictinary of American Family Names, by Oxford Univ Press.
(b) "Zhiqun Zhu 朱志群, a professor of political science and international relations at Bucknell University"
(i) Zhu: PhD University of South Carolina (Political Science), 2003; MA, Indiana State University (Political Science), 1997; BA, Shanghai International Studies University (English Language & Literature), 1988. "In the early 1990s, he was Senior Assistant to Consul for Press and Cultural Affairs at the American Consulate General in Shanghai."  all from his web page at Bucknell Univ.
(ii) Bucknell University
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucknell_University
(1846- ; private; in Lewisburg [60 miles north of state capital Harrisburg], Pennsylvania; William Bucknell was a benefactor who gave money to the university in 1881)

(c) "In May, high-level security [national security advisors of Taiwan and America: David Lee 李大維 and John Bolton; exact date and location unknown] officials from the US and Taiwan met for the first time in nearly four decades, drawing an angry response from Beijing. * * * 'I believe we're inching closer & closer to Beijing's redline on US-Taiwan senior official mtgs--those that are publicized at least,' Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at California-based think tank Rand Corporation, said on Twitter after the US-Taiwan meeting.  Grossman told CNBC on email that his understanding is that such meetings 'have been ongoing for some time in private.' "

The mtgs is plural form of mtg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTG
("Mtg is as an abbreviation for the words 'meeting' and 'mortgage' ")

Remember the "mtgs" appeared in a twitter.
(c) "Grossman said that if the incumbent Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-Wen is re-elected, which is 'likely,' cross-strait tensions are likely to escalate further from 2020 to 2024."

"Likely"?  That is not what opinion polls have said since her inauguration.