On June 16, the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on US-Taiwan relations, entitled “Why Taiwan Matters.” The meeting and the testimony from four US experts on relations with Taiwan produced quite an amazing bipartisan consensus on the present status and the way forward. Most members of the US Congress and all the presenters emphasized that US-Taiwan relations rested on a solid basis, reiterating that the Taiwan Relations Act and shared democratic values were the cornerstones of the relationship. However, there was general disappointment that ties had been allowed to drift.
Former US deputy assistant secretary of state Randy Schriver said that the administration of US President Barack Obama, like previous administrations, “does not have high enough aspirations for Taiwan.” Washington must be more creative and move away from the image that Taiwan is a “problem” to be managed as a subset of its relations with China.
June Teufel Dreyer, a professor at the University of Miami, said Chinese strategists view Taiwan as a stepping stone for reaching China’s larger goal of controlling sea lanes and resources in the Western Pacific. She emphasized that a free and democratic Taiwan was essential and criticized President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration for drifting toward Beijing “at the cost of erosion in Taiwan’s democracy.”
Nancy Tucker, a professor at Georgetown University, urged Congress to become more active in promoting the positive development of US-Taiwan relations. She reiterated that Beijing has continued to deploy missiles to threaten Taiwan despite the present relaxation in cross-strait tensions, and cautioned that it could easily revert to a more aggressive approach. She said Washington must indicate it is willing to work with whatever leadership is elected in Taiwan, sending a clear message that its democracy is here to stay.
US-Taiwan Chamber of Commerce president Rupert Hammond--Chambers decried the lack of ambition and leadership of the US government in relations with Taiwan. He — like all the other presenters — strongly urged the Obama administration to move forward with the sale of new F-16s to Taipei, saying the continued US freeze on arms sales risked legitimizing China’s reliance on military coercion to settle disputes.
All the presenters cautioned against recent proposals that the US reduce its commitment to Taiwan. US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen agreed, saying: “This [a reduced commitment to Taiwan] would be a terrible mistake which would have far-reaching ramifications about how the US treats its democratic allies — its friends.”
So, the signal from Congress is clear: Washington’s ties with Taiwan have been allowed to slip and more vigor and enthusiasm need to be put into the relationship. The Obama administration needs to move ahead with the sale of the F-16s and move away from self-imposed restrictions.
High-level contacts are the essence of international relations and the fact that Chinese leaders are given the red carpet treatment in Washington, while elected leaders from Taiwan are not even allowed to visit the US capital is still one of the most jarring images around. Why can’t US officials meet their counterparts from a democratic Taiwan, while large US delegations travel to Beijing to hobnob with counterparts in a rather repressive regime?
If the US does not shore up its ties with Taipei, Washington risks marginalizing the freedom-loving Taiwanese, who will drift further in China’s direction. The Obama administration must act to stay true to the basic values it supposedly stands for.
Nat Bellocchi served as US ambassador to Botswana and is a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan. The views expressed in this article are his own.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
RSS