The Taiwan Travel Act was proposed by members of the US House of Representatives on Jan. 13 last year, during President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) stopover in San Francisco. The bill, which passed the US Senate on Feb. 28 after clearing the House on Jan. 9, was presented to the White House on March 5 for US President Donald Trump’s signature.
However, the bill has been met with criticism by those who believe it is merely symbolic and not legally binding. That is not entirely true. What these voices seem not to realize is that the bill will be a “legal weapon” to be deployed by the US against Beijing’s “one China” principle.
The House stated in the six findings of the proposal that “Taiwan has succeeded in a momentous transition to democracy beginning in the late 1980s and has been a beacon of democracy in Asia,” while high-level visits are “an indicator of the breadth and depth of ties” between Taiwan and the US.
As a result, it is necessary to remedy insufficient communication due to “self-imposed restrictions” that the US has maintained on high-level visits since the enactment of the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979, the proposal said.
So, another US law named after Taiwan has been born.
The act makes three key points:
First, the policy allows officials at all levels of the US government to travel to Taiwan to meet their Taiwanese counterparts.
Second, it allows high-level Taiwanese officials to enter the US — under conditions that demonstrate appropriate respect for the officials’ dignity — and meet with US officials, including officials from the US Department of State, the Department of Defense and other Cabinet agencies.
Third, it encourages the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, as well as its branches, to conduct affairs in the US.
These points show that the act’s enactment legalizes the positive listing of the Taiwan-US interaction model, without any structural change due to party or personal preference. This is only the first step in Washington’s fight against Beijing’s “one China” principle with the help of the law.
The American Institute in Taiwan is to open its new office building in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) in June — a significant step for Taiwan-US relations. The compound is housed on a new 6.5 hectare site, at a cost of about US$170 million (NT$4.98 billion). At a time when the US is pursuing an Indo-Pacific strategy, the person that Washington sends to host the opening ceremony will be a focal point of global attention.
In the past, Washington would choose someone important who did not hold a government post. However, once Trump signs the act, the choice could be highly flexible because US officials at all levels would be allowed to travel to Taiwan, with even Trump being an option.
Is the act a symbolic one without legal force? Such a claim might have underestimated the act’s strategic import.
Shih Ya-hsuan is an associate professor of geography at National Kaohsiung Normal University.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
A recent piece of international news has drawn surprisingly little attention, yet it deserves far closer scrutiny. German industrial heavyweight Siemens Mobility has reportedly outmaneuvered long-entrenched Chinese competitors in Southeast Asian infrastructure to secure a strategic partnership with Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate, Vingroup. The agreement positions Siemens to participate in the construction of a high-speed rail link between Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. German media were blunt in their assessment: This was not merely a commercial win, but has symbolic significance in “reshaping geopolitical influence.” At first glance, this might look like a routine outcome of corporate bidding. However, placed in
China often describes itself as the natural leader of the global south: a power that respects sovereignty, rejects coercion and offers developing countries an alternative to Western pressure. For years, Venezuela was held up — implicitly and sometimes explicitly — as proof that this model worked. Today, Venezuela is exposing the limits of that claim. Beijing’s response to the latest crisis in Venezuela has been striking not only for its content, but for its tone. Chinese officials have abandoned their usual restrained diplomatic phrasing and adopted language that is unusually direct by Beijing’s standards. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the
RSS