Why the US Still Has No Formal Embassy in Taiwan
Washington keeps a Marine-guarded compound in Taipei that does everything an embassy does except carry the name. The reason dates to a single 1979 decision that still shapes US-Taiwan relations.
Walk into the U.S. government's compound at 100 Jinhu Road in Taipei and you'll find American diplomats issuing visas, the Great Seal of the United States mounted on the wall, and U.S. Marines standing guard outside. What you won't find is a sign reading "Embassy of the United States." The building is officially the American Institute in Taiwan, and the distinction is not cosmetic. Washington has not had a formal embassy in Taiwan since January 1, 1979.
The reason traces to a single decision made 47 years ago, and it still shapes how the United States talks about Taiwan today.
Why Doesn't the US Have an Embassy in Taiwan?
On January 1, 1979, the United States switched formal diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China, the government that had ruled Taiwan since 1949, to the People's Republic of China in Beijing. Under the "One China" framework that resulted, Washington could not maintain official diplomatic relations, meaning embassies and ambassadors, with both governments at once. It chose Beijing. The U.S. Embassy in Taipei closed. Taiwan's embassy in Washington closed with it.
Congress was not willing to let the relationship end there. Within months it passed the Taiwan Relations Act, a domestic U.S. law that authorized an unofficial substitute: a nonprofit corporation, chartered in Washington, D.C., that could carry out the practical work of diplomacy without the formal title. That corporation, the American Institute in Taiwan, was incorporated on January 16, 1979, just two weeks after the embassy in Taipei shut its doors. The arrangement borrowed a template Japan had already used in Taiwan since 1972, after Tokyo made the same recognition switch.
What Is the American Institute in Taiwan?
The American Institute in Taiwan, known as AIT, is staffed mostly by U.S. State Department personnel and functions as a de facto embassy in every practical sense: it issues visas, provides consular services to American citizens, and represents U.S. interests to Taiwan's government. Under Section 12 of the Taiwan Relations Act, agreements AIT strikes on Washington's behalf still have to be reported to Congress, the same requirement that applies to agreements made through actual embassies.
What AIT is not, on paper, is a government agency. It was built specifically as a private corporation so the United States could argue it had no official diplomatic relationship with Taiwan, satisfying Beijing's core condition, while functioning as one in practice. The arrangement has held for over four decades across both Republican and Democratic administrations, largely because it lets Washington maintain deep, functional ties with Taiwan without forcing a diplomatic break with Beijing over the recognition question itself.
The compound has become steadily less discreet over time. AIT moved into a new $250 million headquarters in Taipei's Neihu district, unveiled in 2018 and now guarded by U.S. Marine security guards, the same protection extended to formal American embassies. AIT's current director, Raymond F. Greene, holds the same rank and pay grade as an ambassador, even though his title carries no such name. The institute's budget for fiscal year 2026 runs to roughly $36 million.
Does Taiwan Have an Embassy in Washington?
No, for the same reason in reverse. Taiwan's government operates the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, TECRO, out of Washington, D.C., functioning as its de facto embassy the same way AIT functions as America's in Taipei. Both sides built parallel fictions to preserve a working relationship after 1979 stripped away the official one.
That fiction has thinned in recent years without disappearing. The 2018 Taiwan Travel Act, passed by Congress, explicitly encouraged visits by officials at all levels between the U.S. and Taiwan, something the older, more cautious posture had discouraged. AIT itself has described its new compound as the United States' "brick-and-mortar commitment to Taiwan," language that leans toward permanence even as the legal status stays deliberately unofficial. This is the substance of what analysts call strategic ambiguity: doing the work of an alliance while declining to use the word.
None of that changes the basic fact a visitor to Taipei still notices at the gate on Jinhu Road. There is American diplomacy happening inside that compound every day. There is, by design, no American embassy sign above the door.
