On June 16, the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing called “Why Taiwan Matters.” US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the committee, denounced calls coming from some in Washington to stop selling weapons to Taiwan.
She criticized China for using threats in an attempt to influence the way Taiwanese cast their ballots in next year’s presidential and legislative elections, and urged Taipei to make sure its trade does not become too reliant on the Chinese market, which might allow Beijing to use its economic leverage to weaken Taiwan’s political will.
The hearing was attended by 17 members of the House, and four academics and experts were called as witnesses, all of whom urged US President Barack Obama to provide Taiwan with F-16C/D aircraft. Former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Randall Schriver called on the Obama administration to be a bit more bold and to consider the consequences of its actions, because history showed that the US could weather the fallout from anything China might do in retaliation to arms sales to Taiwan.
The US Department of State was tying its own hands and acting unreasonably by not allowing Taiwanese officials to enter government buildings, said Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, a professor of history at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and June Teufel Dreyer, a professor of political science at the University of Miami.
They proposed scrapping the limitations on senior US officials meeting with Taiwanese officials and the locations at which such meetings could take place. US representatives Dan Burton and Steve Chabot echoed this opinion.
There was also criticism at the hearing of the way President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration was governing.
Chabot said there was a “scent of a criminalization of politics” regarding the treatment given to jailed former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Tucker said the Ma administration was sending out signals that Taipei does not need much assistance from the US in light of improving relations across the Taiwan Strait.
Dreyer was unhappy about setbacks to press freedoms in Taiwan, saying that the steps taken by the Ma administration to improve relations with China had eroded Taiwan’s sovereignty and that statements from Taipei only mentioned to Taiwanese the positives of closer relations and glossed over the risks.
Dreyer said Ma’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party seemed to be in agreement about many policies regarding Taiwan and implied that no agreement about Taiwan’s future existed between the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). She said that Taiwan’s two main parties should present a united front when facing external challenges.
Despite her criticism of the Ma government, Dreyer called on the Obama administration to make an overall appraisal of the military balance between the two sides of the Strait.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office is reportedly preparing to launch a series of criticisms aimed at the DPP — matching salvos launched by the KMT — warning Taiwanese voters that cross-strait relations could face setbacks if they vote for the “wrong” party.
Most of the people who attended the House hearing voiced support for the right of Taiwanese to decide their own future free from outside interference. The message for China is that it should quietly accept whatever happens in Taiwan’s elections and avoid making clumsy verbal interventions.
Lin Cheng-yi is director of Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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