China's economic slowdown makes Taiwan crisis more likely: report

WASHINGTON -- An increasingly sluggish Chinese economy could increase the prospect of a military crisis in the Taiwan Strait as Chinese President Xi Jinping may further embrace nationalism in his unprecedented third term, a prominent U.S. think tank has warned.

The warning comes in an extensive report issued Tuesday by a bipartisan task force convened by the Council on Foreign Relations, covering various aspects of U.S.-Taiwan relations, including politics, diplomacy, economy and security. In it, the experts warned that Washington's four-decade old framework for dealing with Taiwan since establishing diplomatic relations with China in 1979 had become "more and more brittle."