The president of the US-Taiwan Business Council yesterday confirmed a report in a US-based defense magazine that the US State Department had frozen US congressional notifications for new arms sales to Taiwan “until at least spring next year.”
Citing sources in Taipei and Washington, Defense News on Monday wrote that the suspension was the direct result of “effective lobbying by Beijing.”
“The Chinese are ramping up the pressure and engaging us in disinformation to complicate our review, particularly in the context of a vulnerable process for arms sales,” a defense analyst in Washington told the magazine.
US-Taiwan Business Council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers told the Taipei Times that so far, three notifications had been frozen, with more expected to “stack up” as the year progresses. He said the freeze has been in force for “at least a month,” but would not confirm the content of the notifications.
A multibillion-dollar program to upgrade Taiwan’s aging F-16A/B fighter aircraft is not included in the freeze, as the program has yet to enter the notification stage. However, as Beijing regards this program as an arms sale, Hammond-Chambers said he expected notification, which is months away, to face similar pressure. He said he was not aware of other notifications scheduled for this year.
Plans to acquire more advanced F-16C/Ds — which have become a “red line” for Beijing — have been on hold since 2006.
“Washington is as vulnerable as it’s ever been to pressure by Beijing since the switch in diplomatic relations in 1979, and this has raised Beijing’s willingness to pressure Washington,” he told the Taipei Times.
With the US hosting the APEC summit next year, contact between US and Chinese officials will increase and create more opportunities for China to exert pressure on the administration of US President Barack Obama, he said.
The stacking-up of notifications, which would result in multibillion-dollar packages, he said, also compels Beijing to turn up the rhetoric.
“I have never seen the US have so little ambition in the Taiwan Strait,” he said, adding that it was essential to have balance in the strait, with Taipei engaging both Beijing and Washington in a “sustainable” fashion.
If that triangular relationship gets out of balance, it becomes “inherently destabilizing in the long term,” he said, alluding to Washington’s failure to counterbalance the just-signed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China.
While the retaliatory risks from Beijing remain ambiguous and uncertain, Washington is taking them seriously and as a consequence arms sales have been frozen for this year, Hammond-Chambers said.
“It is difficult to conceive the Obama administration releasing anything this year,” he said.
Asked for comment yesterday, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said he had no information on the matter and would ask government agencies to look into it. Wu said Taipei would proceed with planned procurement requests and continue to negotiate with the US.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said by telephone that he had yet to read the report and would look into the matter.
The American Institution in Taiwan was unavailable for comment.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHIH HSIU-CHUAN
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the