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.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
The National Immigration Agency has banned two Chinese from returning to Taiwan, after they published social media content it described as disrespectful to national sovereignty. The agency imposed a two-month ban on a Chinese man surnamed Liang (梁) and a permanent ban on a woman surnamed Yang (楊), an influencer with 23 million followers, in October last year and last week respectively. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) yesterday said on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that Chinese visitors to Taiwan are required to comply with the rules and regulations governing their entry permits. The government has handled the ban and
RSS