Claims emerge lobbyist Bob Dole spent six months setting up controversial phone call between US president-elect and Tsai Ing-wen 
 
 China has urged Washington to deny Taiwan’s president entry to the United States as Donald Trump’s protocol-shredding conversation with Tsai Ing-wen continued to create frictions between the world’s two largest economies. 
 
 
 
 Tsai, who was elected Taiwan’s first female leader in January, is expected to fly through the US next month en route to a three-country tour of Central America with stops in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. 
 
 Why is Donald Trump’s chat with Taiwan such an issue? | George Kyris Read more 
 
 There has been speculation – denied by a number of Trump advisers – that she may stop over in New York for a meeting with the US president-elect ahead of his 20 January inauguration. 
 
 Beijing, which views Taiwan as part of its own territory and does not recognise Tsai’s authority over the self-ruled island, called on the US to prevent that happening. 
 
 China hoped the United States “does not allow her transit, and does not send any wrong signals to ‘Taiwan independence’ forces”, the foreign ministry told Reuters in a statement. 
 
 The foreign ministry claimed the true aim of Tsai, of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive party (DPP), was “self-evident”. 
 
 A spokesperson for the US state department appeared to dismiss China’s calls, noting that allowing Taiwanese leaders to transit through the US was part of a “long-standing US practice, consistent with the unofficial nature of our relations with Taiwan”. 
 
 China’s calls came as it emerged that former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole may have played a role in setting up the controversial 10-minute conversation between Trump and Tsai that has so angered Beijing. 
 
 The New York Times reported that in the lead-up to that call Dole, now a Washington lobbyist, had spent six months working behind the scenes to establish high-level contact between Taiwanese officials and Trump staff. 
 
 
 
 “It’s fair to say that we may have had some influence,” Dole was quoted as saying by the Wall Street Journal. 
 
 Dole’s law firm, Alston & Bird, reportedly received US$140,000 from the Taipei economic and cultural representative office, which functions as an unofficial embassy in the US. 
 
 Those revelations fuelled renewed criticism of the way in which foreign affairs were being handled by the US president-elect. 
 
 “It does seem very strange that Trump is ignoring the state department while apparently allowing Bob Dole, a lobbyist for Taiwan, to make arrangements for him in what appears to be a change in US policy dealing with Taiwan,” Fred Wertheimer, the founder and president of watchdog group Democracy 21, told Politico. 
 
 “Dole’s interests here certainly involved Taiwan’s interests more than it did American interests, and the fact that he was the intermediary raises a serious issue about just how President-elect Trump is going to make US foreign policy.” 
 
 Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a China expert from the University of California, Irvine, said Beijing’s initial public response to Trump’s decision to engage with Taiwan’s leader had been “relatively measured”. 
 
 But its irritation appeared to have intensified in the wake of Sunday night’s tweets in which the billionaire attacked Beijing over the South China Sea and alleged currency manipulation. Wasserstrom said there was now growing talk “about needing to respond more dramatically if this moves from tweets into policy … They are moving towards a less placid response.” 
 
 Trump's Taiwan phone call preceded by hotel development inquiry Read more 
 
 Wasserstrom cautioned the real estate tycoon against adopting a “slash and burn” approach towards relations with the world’s number two economy, even if a valid argument could be made for deepening relations with Taiwan. 
 
 “There is a good argument to be made for why it is foolish to not recognise that the president of Taiwan is an important figure and worth having dialogue with,” he said. 
 
 But if Trump was determined to pursue a new policy towards Taiwan, and therefore China, it should be done through set of measured moves “not by just lobbing rhetorical hand-grenades and seeing what happens”. 
 
 Li Yonghui, the dean of the school of international relations at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, said Beijing’s attempts to “play down this matter” in public reflected a Chinese tradition of leaving room for manoeuvre and not hurting others’ pride. 
 
 “But privately there will have been some negotiations … The Chinese government’s concerns and even some form of anger will have been expressed and will be felt by the US government,” he said. 
 
 Additional reporting by Christy Yao 
 
 

 Bob Dole, pictured with Vice President-elect Mike Pence at the Republican National Convention, even arranged for members of Taiwan’s ruling party to take a White House tour. | Getty Dole lobbied Trump's team on Taiwan for months Private briefings, convention delegation, tougher platform language all preceded protocol-breaking phone call. 
 
 Bob Dole’s lobbying Donald Trump on Taiwan went far beyond a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s president. 
 
 Dole, the only past Republican presidential nominee to endorse Trump before the election, briefed the campaign’s policy director, set up meetings between campaign staff and Taiwanese emissaries, arranged for Taiwan’s delegation to attend the Republican National Convention, and helped tilt the party platform further in the island’s favor, a lobbying disclosure document filed with the Justice Department and released to POLITICO shows. He even arranged for members of Taiwan’s ruling party to take a White House tour, according to the filing. 
 
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 Taiwan paid the 93-year-old Dole and his law firm, Alston & Bird, $140,000 between May and October, according to the new disclosure. His spokeswoman declined to comment. 
 
 The revelation of Dole’s extensive influence on Trump’s team follows reports that the president-elect has been declining the advice of State Department experts before talking with world leaders. It also contrasts with the transition’s ban on lobbyists and Trump’s campaign pledge to forbid his officials from lobbying for foreign governments and outlaw foreign lobbyists’ donating to American candidates. 
 
 “It does seem very strange that Trump is ignoring the State Department while apparently allowing Bob Dole, a lobbyist for Taiwan, to make arrangements for him in what appears to be a change in U.S. policy dealing with Taiwan,” said Fred Wertheimer, the founder and president of watchdog group Democracy 21. “Dole’s interests here certainly involved Taiwan’s interests more than it did American interests, and the fact that he was the intermediary raises a serious issue about just how President-elect Trump is going to make U.S. foreign policy.” 
 
 Dole’s work is part of Taiwan’s decades-long investment in grooming conservatives to bolster its U.S. relations at China’s expense, dispatching lobbyists to ply Capitol Hill, feting congressional staff with trips to Taipei, throwing parties at a vast D.C. estate, and funneling money to China hawks at right-leaning think tanks. 
 
 “They’ve spread it around pretty widely,” said Doug Paal, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who was the unofficial U.S. representative to Taiwan from 2002 to 2006. 
 
 Earlier this year, Dole set up a meeting between Taiwan’s representative to the U.S., Stanley Kao, and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a key Trump adviser and later his choice for attorney general. He also convened a meeting between Taiwanese diplomats and the Trump transition team. The disclosure didn’t specify exactly when the meetings occurred. 
 
 The filing also reveals Dole’s hand in making the Republican platform the most pro-Taiwan it has ever been. The 2016 edition added language affirming the “Six Assurances” that President Ronald Reagan made to Taiwan’s security in 1982. 
 
 The U.S. recognized Taiwan as the legitimate government of China from the 1949 Communist takeover until President Richard Nixon’s first steps to normalize relations with the mainland in 1972. Since then, deepening economic ties between the U.S. and mainland China have stoked fears in Taiwan that the U.S. might waver in its commitment to Taiwan’s defense. 
 
 Dole’s role in the phone call was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. “It’s fair to say that we may have had some influence,” he told the Journal. 
 
 Not all of Taiwan’s lobbyists were in on the plan, a person familiar with the matter told POLITICO. It even left out Taiwan’s pseudo-embassy, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, whose officials found out about it from media reports. 
 
 “This is sudden news for us as well,” said Thalia Lin, executive officer of TECRO’s press division. “The whole office has no idea what’s going on.” 
 
 The U.S. emissary from Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, Michael Fonte, said he had only a few hours’ heads-up. 
 
 “Honestly, I have not had any marching orders what to do pro or con,” Fonte told POLITICO. “Nobody in Taipei has said, 'You’ve got to do XYZ.'” 
 
 Taiwan spends more than $170,000 a month ($2 million a year) on a fleet of outside lobbyists led by former lawmakers. In addition to Alston & Bird, Taiwan pays the firms of former Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle, former Republican Senator Don Nickles, former Florida Republican Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt. The law and lobbying firm Crowell & Moring is also on retainer. 
 
 Trump’s accepting the phone call shattered decades of diplomatic protocol eschewing official relations with Taiwan, leading China to lodge a formal complaint with the White House. 
 
 Taiwan’s ties to the Republican National Committee run especially deep. Reince Priebus, Trump’s choice for White House chief of staff, met with Taiwan’s previous president on a 2011 visit in his role as RNC chairman. 
 
 The chairman of the Idaho Republican Party, Steve Yates, is a longtime advocate of strengthening the U.S. security commitment to Taiwan and also used to lobby for the country, disclosures show. He told the Idaho Statesman he wasn’t involved in Trump’s phone call and didn’t return a request for comment while he is traveling — in Taiwan, according to his assistant. 
 
 Trump’s transition is also stocked with staffers from the Heritage Foundation, which has received funding from Taiwanese companies. They include Steven Groves, who is on the team responsible for the handoff at the State Department, and Ed Feulner, the conservative think tank’s former president and an adviser to the Trump transition, who met with the Taiwanese president in Taipei in October. 
 
 The Heritage Foundation has received money for 30 years from three Taiwanese companies, according to Walter Lohman, who leads the organization’s Asia Studies Center. Lohman, who was also traveling, said he couldn’t recall the companies’ names but that they’re displayed on plaques in his office. Still, he said they don’t directly fund or influence the foundation’s research. 
 
 “We’re glad to have that funding, of course, but we would be still be committed to this relationship to Taiwan if these companies gave us no funding starting tomorrow,” he said. “There’s nothing nefarious about it.” 
 
 In late October, TECRO’s deputy representative spoke at a Heritage Foundation discussion on Taiwan’s foreign policy. 
 
 “We work together all the time, but we don’t often have representatives come here and speak from the stage,” Lohman said at the event. 
 
 Taiwan also provides funding to the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for Strategic & International Studies, which are both home to prominent pro-Taiwan voices, according to the groups’ disclosures. 
 
 “I think Taiwan deserves this kind of courtesy,” Mike Green, a former National Security Council staffer now at CSIS, said of Trump’s phone call with the Taiwanese president. “It’s not a policy, it’s a gesture.” 
 
 A CSIS spokesman said most of Taiwan’s money pays for executive training for its own senior officials, and Green doesn’t get any direct funding from Taiwan. 
 
 Trump’s phone call was “a good first step toward rebalancing a trilateral China-Taiwan-U.S. relationship” and “higher-level engagement with Taiwan serves U.S. national interests and values,” Dan Blumenthal, a former Pentagon official now at AEI, co-wrote in the National Interest yesterday. The right-leaning think tank’s 2009 donor list, which was mistakenly made public, showed a $550,000 contribution, its fourth-largest, from TECRO. 
 
 An AEI spokesman said the think tank no longer accepts foreign donations. 
 
 Think tanks also have become more careful, in response to criticism, about insulating donors from researchers. But it’s still widespread for lobbyists, foreign governments and other causes to seek out and support people who share their viewpoints. 
 
 “The Taiwan lobby has been much more identified with the far right,” said Robert Torricelli, the former New Jersey senator who used to lobby for TECRO. 
 
 A new think tank opened two months ago, the first dedicated solely to Taiwan. It is known as the Global Taiwan Institute. The organization is privately funded and not affiliated with the Taiwanese government, according to its director, Russell Hsiao. Its advisory board includes prominent researchers such as Gordon Chang, William Stanton and John Tkacik, who have all supported Trump’s phone call. Reps. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) attended the group’s launch party. 
 
 Taiwan was once considered one of Washington’s most fearsome lobbies, the way people talk today about the National Rifle Association and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. That stature diminished when President Jimmy Carter normalized relations with China in 1979, initiating the new U.S. posture toward the Chinese-Taiwanese dispute that Trump has now scrambled. 
 
 On Capitol Hill, much of the direct lobbying comes from TECRO itself. 
 
 “They made a real commitment to being a presence on the Hill,” said Lester Munson, a former Senate staffer now with the lobbying firm BGR. “Anytime their issue was on the agenda, they were there. It’s pretty impressive work by them.” 
 
 Taiwan pays for congressional staff to visit the country on trips, according to a State Department list of approved programs obtained by POLITICO. Such sponsored travel would be illegal coming from corporate lobbyists, but is allowed from foreign governments under the Mutual Education and Cultural Exchange Act. Not only that, but the trips are never publicly disclosed or even centrally tracked. 
 
 In 2012, Rep. Bill Owens (D-N.Y.) personally paid back a Taiwan university for a luxurious trip to Taiwan that was arranged by lobbying firm Park Strategies, then working for TECRO. 
 
 Staffers, researchers and diplomats can be found mingling every October at Taiwan’s National Day celebration at its sprawling Twin Oaks estate in Washington’s Cleveland Park neighborhood. The event typically features a circus-size tent full of food and drink, according to people who have attended. 
 
 Taiwanese interests also benefit from a large and vocal Taiwanese-American community, with groups such as the Formosan Association for Public Affairs. Rep. Ed Royce, the California Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, employs Chinese-speaking staff and has a special Taiwan-focused biography on his website. 
 
 Royce visited Taiwan on an official delegation this May and June, joined by Reps. Bill Flores (R-Texas) and Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), according to congressional records. 
 
 “I don't think it's that big of an issue,” Royce said of Trump’s phone call on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" Tuesday. 

 BEIJING/GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - China called on U.S. officials on Tuesday not to let Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen pass through the United States en route to Guatemala next month, days after President-elect Donald Trump irked Beijing by speaking to Tsai in a break with decades of precedent. 
 
 Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during an interview in Luque, Paraguay, June 28, 2016. REUTERS/Jorge Adorno 
 
 The U.S. State Department appeared to reject the call, saying that such transits were based on “long-standing U.S. practice, consistent with the unofficial nature of (U.S.) relations with Taiwan.” 
 
 China is deeply suspicious of Tsai, whom it thinks wants to push for the formal independence of Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing regards as a renegade province. 
 
 Her call with Trump on Friday was the first between a U.S. president-elect or president and a Taiwanese leader since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition to China from Taiwan in 1979. 
 
 Tsai is due to visit Guatemala, one of Taiwan’s small band of diplomatic allies, on Jan. 11-12, its foreign minister, Carlos Raul Morales, told Reuters. 
 
 Taiwan’s Liberty Times, considered close to Tsai’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, reported on Monday that she was planning to go through New York early next month on her way to Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. 
 
 Taiwan has not formally confirmed Tsai’s trip but visits to its allies in the region are normally combined with transit stops in the United States and meetings with Taiwan-friendly officials. 
 
 The trip would take place before Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20 to replace Democrat Barack Obama and Tsai’s delegation would seek to meet Trump’s team, including his White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, the Liberty Times said. 
 
 MEETING “UNLIKELY” 
 
 An adviser to Trump’s transition team said he considered it “very unlikely” there would be a meeting between Tsai and Trump if she were to go through New York. 
 
 China’s Foreign Ministry said the one-China principle, which states Taiwan is part of China, was commonly recognized by the international community and that Tsai’s real aim was “self-evident.” 
 
 China hopes the United States “does not allow her transit, and does not send any wrong signals to ‘Taiwan independence’ forces,” the ministry said in a statement sent to Reuters. 
 
 U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Monday he had no information whether Tsai would meet U.S. officials if she stopped in transit but said Taiwanese presidents did stop over periodically. 
 
 He said the transits were “based on long-standing U.S. practice, consistent with the unofficial nature of our relations with Taiwan.” A spokeswoman repeated the position on Tuesday when asked to comment on the Chinese call. 
 
 In a meeting with American reporters on Tuesday, Tsai played down the significance of her conversation with Trump, saying it was to congratulate the president-elect. 
 
 “I do not foresee major policy shifts in the near future because we all see the value of stability in the region,” she told the reporters. 
 
 U.S. Vice President-elect Mike Pence told the Fox News Channel on Tuesday that Trump did not regret taking the call. 
 
 “(The) president-elect was fully aware of the one-China policy,” Pence said. “He’s also very aware that the United States has sold billions of dollars in arms to Taiwan. 
 
 “We have a unique relationship with that country that’s been defined over the decades since we’ve reopened relations with the People’s Republic of China but I think he think he felt it would be rude not to take the call.” 
 
 Taiwan has been self governing since 1949 when Nationalist forces fled to the island after defeat by Mao Zedong’s communists in China’s civil war. 
 
 Taiwan’s Presidential Office said media reports about a January trip were “excessive speculation.” 
 
 El Salvador’s government said it was working with Taiwan on plans for a visit by Tsai in the second week of January but gave no specific dates. 
 
 The Nicaraguan government had no immediate comment. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is to be sworn in for a third consecutive term on Jan. 10, however, so Tsai’s trip to Guatemala would dovetail with that ceremony. 
 
 The White House said on Monday it had sought to reassure China after Trump’s phone call with Tsai, which the Obama administration warned could undermine progress in relations with Beijing. 

 NEW YORK, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- A law firm that employs former Republican Sen. Bob Dole was paid nearly $150,000 by the Taiwanese government to foster a relationship between it and President-elect Donald Trump -- despite potentially severe political repercussions, according to a government filing. 
 
 Dole, a lobbyist for the Washington, D.C., law firm Alston & Bird, acted as an agent for Taiwan for months in setting up a relationship between both parties, the documents said. 
 
 Trump caused an international stir last week when he spoke with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen by telephone, despite the lack of any formal diplomatic ties between her government and the United States. 
 
 Formal relations were cut in 1979 when former President Jimmy Carter closed the Taipei embassy and declared China the official diplomatic authority for the east Asian state. 
 
 Dole's role in the six-month campaign was disclosed by Alston & Bird last month in a required filing with the U.S. Department of Justice. 
 
 According to the documents, Alston & Bird was paid $140,000 between May and October for the work -- an average of a little more than $20,000 per month. 
 
 Trump's campaign said the phone call was initiated by Tsai and was only made to discuss his election victory and ways to improve ties between both governments. 
 
 Experts, though, noted that such a conversation with a lack of formal relations has the potential to upset Beijing, which is a major political and economic influence globally and for the United States. 
 
 Trump subsequently downplayed the call by emphasizing it was Tsai who called him. 
 
 Critics pointed to the event as a political gaffe reflective of Trump's lack of foreign policy experience, but the Justice Department filing suggests it was instead the result of a sophisticated monthslong developmental effort. 
 
 RELATED Trump takes swipe at China after criticism of Taiwan call 
 
 As a lobbyist, Dole represents the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States -- an unofficial diplomatic office that facilitates relations between the two countries. 
 
 The documents were filed before the phone call, making it unclear what role, if any, Dole played in setting up the actual phone call. 
 
 Dole, who served in the Senate from 1969 to 1996 and had two separate stints as majority leader, made no immediate comment on the matter Tuesday. He also served in the House for six years and ran for president as the Republican nominee in 1996, ultimately losing in a landslide to President Bill Clinton. 

 President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter to criticize China over its economic and military policies. China’s Foreign Ministry’s response to the tweets suggested that Beijing had made its displeasure known directly to Mr. Trump’s team. Photo: Getty Images 
 
 The verbal confrontation between President-elect Donald Trump and the Chinese government escalated on Monday, as China responded harshly to attacks by Mr. Trump on its economic and security positions. 
 
 The exchange signaled a new and potentially more adversarial relationship between the world’s two largest economies, as Mr. Trump moves to follow through on his campaign-trail promises to challenge China’s trade and currency policies. 
 
 ...
– Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen initiated the phone call with Donald Trump, but Bob Dole was the architect. As a lobbyist for law firm Alston & Bird—to which the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US paid $140,000 from May to October—the former Republican senator worked for six months to help Taiwan buddy up to Trump, reports UPI. That included arranging meetings between Trump staff and Taiwanese emissaries and getting Taiwan's delegation into the Republican National Convention, reports Politico, based on a lobbying disclosure document. "It's fair to say that we may have had some influence," Dole tells the Wall Street Journal, while a Trump official also says the phone call was arranged by Dole. The consequences of such a call, which infuriated China, are still being felt. Ing-wen is scheduled to fly through the US in January, and though advisers say Trump won't meet with her, China hopes the US "does not allow her transit, and does not send any wrong signals to 'Taiwan independence' forces," the foreign ministry tells Reuters. The State Department, however, says allowing Taiwanese leaders to travel through the US is a "long-standing US practice," per the Guardian. Trump has followed up the phone call by bashing China's taxing of US imports and actions in the South China Sea on Twitter, raising fears that Beijing will respond by escalating its military presence in the South China Sea, refusing to obey UN sanctions against North Korea, or with cyberattacks.