A strong US-Taiwan relationship need not compete with the recently warming links between Taiwan and China, but can rather complement the process by providing Taiwan with the confidence to explore better relations with Beijing, outgoing American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Stephen Young said yesterday at a US national day reception in Taipei.
Young quoted former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), saying: “It doesn’t matter where you come from, so long as you love Taiwan, you are a new Taiwanese.”
Young said by definition he considers himself a “New Taiwanese Man” and he lauded the “civility” and “kindness” of Taiwanese that he has experienced during his years in Taiwan.
PHOTO: CNA
“I think of Taiwan’s further maturation as a democracy is best exemplified by the free and fair election held last year. The verdict of which was calmly accepted by all the major political parties,” he said, adding US-Taiwan ties in all realms will deepen in the future.
His replacement William Stanton is an experienced diplomat and “accomplished China hand,” Young said, adding that he was confident that he was leaving Taipei and the AIT in “very capable hands.”
Young spent part of his childhood in Taiwan and later returned to study Chinese as part of the US Foreign Service program.
As a diplomat, he has been stationed in Taiwan three times. An avid climber and cyclist, Young has traveled extensively around the country and said the beauty of the island was one of the things his family would miss about Taiwan.
In his address to the reception, Premier Liu Chao-hsiuan (劉兆玄) accidentally made the US 2,000 years older by congratulating Washington on its “2,333rd” birthday.
Young was scheduled to leave Taiwan today. Stanton, now the deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Seoul, is scheduled to arrive next month.
Young will leave his post after failing to convince Taiwan to lift the ban on US bone-in beef from cattle older than 30 months of age, which he has worked hard for during his three-year tenure as AIT director. One of his legacies will be the mountainside plot in Neihu, which will be AIT’s future home.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS