The US and China are discussing ways for Taiwan to increase its exposure and influence in the world by joining more international institutions and organizations, Washington sources said.
Among the groups being considered are the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), sources said.
The issue is expected to be raised in talks between US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) when they meet in Washington next month.
US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg confirmed the development on Tuesday when he addressed the Center for American Progress on “The Future of the US-China Relationship.”
“We are encouraged by the positive steps that have been taken by Taipei and Beijing and urge them to continue to take steps that will build trust and contribute to stability,” he said.
“There has been important progress on the economic front and we want to see further progress in the future,” Steinberg said.
Asked to elaborate, he said: “We were very encouraged by China’s decision to support Taiwan’s participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly [the WHO’s decision-making body] and there are other opportunities for the two to work together in places where the membership is not based on being a sovereign state.”
“We have discussed with China some of the particular institutions and organizations,” he said.
“For example, on climate change, there is an opportunity for Taiwan to play a constructive role. It would be in the interests of all of us to have Taiwan engaged in some particular format. There are a broad range of areas in which there is opportunity for dialogue and progress in the relationship,” Steinberg said.
China generally blocks Taiwan’s attempts to gain international space, but the Washington sources said that in private discussions Beijing has recently shown some flexibility.
Earlier, Steinberg emphasized the importance of maintaining “transparency” in US-China military relations and avoiding the danger “that our militaries will become rivals.”
He said it was imperative to ensure that the military-to-military dialogue was sustainable and that it was not threatened by periods of disagreement, when the need for dialogue was all the more important.
“The ‘one China’ policy remains an important part of our overall approach to our engagement with China, based on the three joint communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act,” Steinberg said. “Our policy is aimed at promoting stability and dialogue across the Straits [sic]. We continue to believe that appropriate defensive arms sales to Taiwan give Taiwan the confidence to engage the mainland and we are encouraged by the positive steps that have been taken by Taipei and Beijing and urge them to continue to take steps that will build trust and contribute to stability.”
He said the US was working hard to strengthen other aspects of security cooperation with China, particularly in some of the non-traditional areas, such as counterterrorism, tackling piracy and law enforcement.
In related news, the Bureau of Public Affairs at the US State Department said in a statement on Tuesday that Steinberg would lead a delegation to Asia from next Tuesday through Friday.
The delegation, consisting of US National Security Council Senior Director for Asian Affairs Jeffrey Bader, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell and US Special Envoy Sung Kim, will leave Washington for Beijing next Tuesday, where they are scheduled to meet senior officials to continue consultations with the Chinese on regional security issues.
Steinberg and Bader will return to Washington on Dec. 17, while Campbell will travel to Tokyo on Dec. 16. Kim will travel to Seoul on Dec. 16, with both Campbell and Kim returning to Washington on Dec. 17, the statement said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has