Council on Foreign Relations (cfr.org)
. . ."President Biden’s embrace of strategic clarity is a welcome and overdue adjustment to U.S. policy, but a critical corollary to that shift should be clear messaging that such a commitment would not be operative if Taiwan were to provoke a crisis by unilaterally declaring independence." . . .
"On Sunday evening, President Joe Biden made headlines when he asserted in a 60 Minutes interview that the United States would come to Taiwan’s defense if China were to launch an unprovoked attack. His embrace of strategic clarity, however, was not his most notable comment on Taiwan, since this was the fourth time that Biden has articulated such a commitment. Instead, the comment that will raise more alarms in Beijing was Biden’s statement that “Taiwan makes their own judgments about their independence…that’s their decision.” While this comment might seem innocuous, it would mark a significant shift in U.S. policy.
"Since the United States severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan (formally the Republic of China) in 1979 and established formal diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China, U.S. policy has been to not support Taiwan independence. The State Department’s website currently notes, “we do not support Taiwan independence,” and Secretary of State Antony Blinken used the same language in his major speech outlining the Biden administration’s China policy.
"In this regard, the Biden administration’s policy is the same as its predecessors. In the 1982 communique between the United States and China, the Reagan administration stated it had no intention of “pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan’” (i.e. it would not support Taiwan independence)." . . .
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