President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) efforts to improve relations with China will create new challenges for US policymakers amid concerns that those efforts could compromise US interests in the East Asian region, a new congressional report says.
The report was sent to members of Congress last month by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a body that provides research and advice to lawmakers on policy issues they will have to deal with in the coming period. Its findings often condition how Congress deals with issues such as Taiwan.
“While US policy favors improvements in Taiwan-PRC [People’s Republic of China] relations, it has been silent on what should be the speed, depth, and degree of cross-strait conciliation,” the report said.
“Some observers worry that the KMT [Chinese Nationalist Party] government, driven by economic imperatives and pressures from the Taiwan business community, quickly could reach an accommodation with Beijing that may complicate US regional interests,” it said.
The report contrasted US policy choices under Ma with the increasingly frigid Taiwan-US relations during the last years of the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration.
While it found many of the Chen-era problems remaining, it saw both opportunities and potential problems under the Ma administration.
“With Taiwan under the KMT government, the United States will be faced with challenges familiar from past years,” including new arms sales, visa requests by Ma and other senior Taiwanese officials, the level of relations with Ma and such economic issues as whether to grant Taiwan a free-trade agreement, the report by CRS Asia specialist Kerry Dumbaugh said.
“In addition, Taiwan-US relations under the KMT government face new challenges — notably the implications that President Ma’s initiatives toward the PRC have for US interests; and what role, if any, Washington should play in Taiwan-PRC relations,” the report said.
Regarding the freeze in US arms sales to Taiwan, the CRS report said the issue “takes on new shades of delicacy in an environment of improving Taiwan-PRC ties.”
New sales or a continuation of the year long freeze can have “symbolic significance” for China and Taiwan, it said.
“US policymakers will be faced with decisions on what kind of signal a specific US arms sale will send under current circumstances,” and future sales “may have significant implications for cross-strait ties,” it said.
The report also called for a strengthened Democratic Progressive Party as an effective opposition to KMT rule.
“Many feel that US interests in having Taiwan remain a full-fledged democracy may be compromised should the opposition remain too feeble effectively to monitor and hold accountable the majority party,” the report said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS