“Taiwan should not be so defenseless that it feels it has to do everything that China says … China cannot be so overwhelming that it can bully Taiwan.”
These words, uttered by US National Intelligence Director Admiral Dennis Blair at a US Senate committee hearing on Thursday, are intriguing.
This is partly because of Blair’s cautiousness at the expense of coherence: There cannot be degrees of defenselessness, nor degrees of overwhelming power.
But by implying that Taiwan is at risk of defenselessness and that China seeks unmatchable power in the region, Blair — and his hard-nosed intelligence apparatus — represents the “bad cop” of US President Barack Obama’s fledgling China policy against the “good cop” of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the traditionally more congenial State Department.
Blair’s immediate support for closing the growing gap in cross-strait military capability and his identification of Chinese military strategy as an ongoing and unequivocal “threat” to Taiwan is a very welcome tonic after years of obfuscation and scapegoating under former president George W. Bush.
Blair’s statement can only irritate China, though it is likely that Beijing will hold its collective tongue until its officials meet Clinton on Chinese soil next week.
Blair’s comments also offer a degree of relief to the Taiwanese military and opposition politicians who fear that cross-strait detente would jeopardize military ties with the US and hurt future arms sales.
The perception that a Taiwanese government leaning toward Beijing would compromise military secrets and eventually hand weapons to the Chinese military seems to have weakened, at least for the moment.
The development also represents a mixed bag for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
On the one hand, with the US government sketching a rough line in the sand, Ma will find the going slightly more difficult as China demands further pragmatic evidence that his government can stay on its unificationist track.
On the other hand, Ma can use this renewed expression of support and possible commitment to more arms sales from the US as a domestic weapon against the Democratic Progressive Party, arguing that the Ma government best serves the defense interests of all Taiwanese.
Some people in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — those who negotiate with China, in particular — will be greatly irritated at Blair’s unequivocal assessment of Chinese intentions and capabilities.
But for most, Washington’s regrouping on cross-strait military matters will provide a boost in confidence.
The “status quo” that so many people place faith in was looking quite ragged there for a while. Now, with election season over and Washington looking to fortify policy over the next four years, this strange slogan has had some life breathed into it at a time of considerable symbolic value.
That support for Taiwan has been expressed by the head of the US intelligence apparatus rather than by a president speaking off the cuff and apparently without institutional backup — as Bush did in his first term — bodes well for Taiwan’s immediate future.
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to support the nation’s special defense bill to counter Chinese threats. At the same time, Beijing announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had invited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to visit China, a move to make the KMT a pawn in its proxy warfare against Taiwan and the US. Since her inauguration as KMT chair last year, Cheng, widely seen as a pro-China figure, has made no secret of her desire to interact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and meet with Xi, naming it a
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
No state has ever formally recognized the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) as a legal entity. The reason is not a lack of legitimacy — the CTA is a functioning exile government with democratic elections and institutions — but the iron grip of realpolitik. To recognize the CTA would be to challenge the People’s Republic of China’s territorial claims, a step no government has been willing to take given Beijing’s economic leverage and geopolitical weight. Under international law, recognition of governments-in-exile has precedent — from the Polish government during World War II to Kuwait’s exile government in 1990 — but such recognition
RSS