The US is not concerned that advanced military technologies will be leaked to China through its weapon sales to Taiwan because Taiwan is capable of protecting such technology, the top US envoy to Taiwan said yesterday.
“I don’t really think there is a great concern about the transfer of technology from Taiwan because I think that Taiwan has very effective means in the controlling of technology,” director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Stephen Young said at a biannual press conference.
Washington welcomes the current detente between Taiwan and China, but is keenly aware of Beijing’s rapid military build-up against Taiwan and Taiwan’s eagerness to purchase more arms, Young said.
“I think that the [US President Barack] Obama administration will calculate the requests of our Taiwan friends in that light and act at an appropriate time when there are decisions about what types of defensive weapons might make the most sense to provide this island,” he said.
Describing the triangular relations between Taipei, Beijing and Washington, Young said there have been times in the past when one side of the triangle was stronger than others, but that one of the promising aspects at present is that all three sides are fairly strong, and improving and growing.
“An important point here is that President Ma [Ying-jeou (馬英九)] and his government, despite its very major focus on improving relations with Beijing, continues to believe it is appropriate and necessary to have an active security cooperation relationship with the US,” he said.
He said that Washington would continue to look closely at Taiwan’s arms requests and that it would not consult with Beijing on its security cooperation or arms decisions involving Taiwan.
“That’s the framework. The decision itself will be made by Washington under that framework at a time and in a nature that reflect our own national interests as well as our commitments to Taiwan,” Young said.
He said the efforts of all sides can reduce the possibility of Taiwan becoming a land mine in US-China relations, as some have suggested.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JENNY W. HSU
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater