The Bush administration is considering key changes in its policy toward Taiwan as it prepares for President George W. Bush's meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (
An academic from an influential think tank said that among the options being considered by top administration foreign policy officials are a public announcement that the US "opposes" Taiwan independence, and a return to the Clinton-era policy of the "three-noes."
The three-noes policy, enunciated during a trip by former president Bill Clinton to China, says the US endorses no Taiwan independence, no "two-Chinas" -- or "one China, one Taiwan" -- and no Taiwan membership in international organizations requiring statehood for membership.
On the independence issue, such a statement would change the current policy that Washington "does not support" Taiwan independence.
China has been pushing the administration to proclaim its opposition to independence for more than a year, and, according to some sources, got Bush to say privately that he opposes independence during his summit meeting with then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin (
The academic's claims could not be confirmed by Taiwanese or US administration sources.
State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli refused to get into a semantic discussion of the issue when asked repeatedly at the regular daily department press briefing.
"I think our policy is clear, and our policy is not to support Taiwanese independence. And that's the position, you know, we have elaborated, that is the position we're going to stick with," he said.
Other sources point to comments made by Randall Schriver, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, at a press briefing for the Taiwan Washington press corps last week that the US' Taiwan policy has not changed. That has been reaffirmed by other administration officials, sources say.
According to the source, this is the timetable for the administration to prepare for Wen's visit and set its Taiwan policy: Yesterday, the so-called deputies committee were to meet, bringing together top China specialists from the foreign policy establishment, which would presumably include the Departments of State and Defense as well as the National Security Council.
Their recommendations will go to their secretary-level bosses today, which will recommend their policy options to Bush tomorrow. Tomorrow's meeting will decide what Bush tells Wen next Tuesday.
"The American leaders are telling the Chinese privately what they will not say publicly," the academic said, citing Bush's alleged statement in Crawford last October.
The source also repeated rumors in Washington that James Moriarty, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's chief Asia aide, is in Taiwan to discuss military and other issues, despite a denial of Moriarty's visit by the White House Monday.
"Everybody's talking about it, so I assume it's taking place," he said.
Other sources could not confirm the Moriarty trip.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS