American Institute in Taiwan Chairman Raymond Burghardt on Tuesday said Chinese pressure on Missouri Governor Jay Nixon to cancel a visit to Taiwan was “unacceptable” and inconsistent with Beijing’s claims it sought to improve ties with Taipei.
Nixon last month scrapped plans to visit Taiwan after a Chicago-based Chinese diplomat warned the trip could imperil a project by China to turn St Louis airport into a hub for Chinese cargo in the US.
Over the previous two years, eight US governors have visited Taiwan.
Speaking to reporters in Taipei, Burghardt called China’s actions “absolutely unacceptable.”
“My impression is that most American politicians, American governors, they don’t like to be pushed around that way,” he said.
Burghardt said China’s actions were at odds with the improvements in relations across the Taiwan Strait that have taken place since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英) came into office in May 2008.
“It’s ... inconsistent with all their professions of desire to improve cross-strait relations to treat Taiwan that way,” Burghardt said. “I think it’s a serious matter.”
Turning to Taiwan’s international space, Burghardt said the US “takes seriously” Taipei’s participation in international organizations and “will continue to work for ways to help Taiwan improve its international representation.”
“I think whatever we do, it probably never looks like enough. But as I said, there is a lot [that] goes on, and we do a lot,” he said
Emphasizing his point, Burghardt pointed to an instance in which Washington helped Taiwan participate in an international event — a case he said had not been made public up until now.
Working behind the scenes, the US succeeded in having the online registration system for the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico, last month changed so that a Taiwanese NGO delegation could register and participate without having to do so under “one China,” he said.
Prior to the change, Burghardt said, the online registration system only had one option — one that linked Taiwan to China.
“You can rest assured that we are the best friend Taiwan has,” he 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,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
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