Former US ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, launching his White House bid yesterday, urged voters to help him rewrite a grim narrative of US decline and sharply assailed US President Barack Obama.
“We’re not just choosing new leaders. We’re choosing whether we are to become yesterday’s story or tomorrow’s. Everything is at stake. This is the hour when we choose our future,” he said in remarks prepared for delivery.
Emulating former US president Ronald Reagan, Huntsman was due to officially launch his campaign in a New Jersey state park in sight of the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline scarred by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The former Utah governor, 51, savaged Obama’s handling of the economy during the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, saying “we need more than hope” in a reference to the “hope and change” mantra of Obama’s historic 2008 campaign.
“For the first time in our history, we are about to pass down to the next generation a country that is less powerful, less compassionate, less competitive and less confident,” Huntsman said in excerpts from his speech.
Huntsman painted himself as the right candidate to “make hard decisions that are necessary to avert disaster,” saying that the swelling US debt risked smothering the economy and weighing down Washington’s global leadership.
“Our influence in the world will wane. Our security will be more precarious. The 21st century then will be known as the end of the American Century. We can’t accept this, and we won’t,” he said.
Huntsman did not directly allude to his recently completed 20-month stretch in Beijing handling arguably the most crucial US diplomatic relationship, a job that has proven a double-edged sword among his fellow Republicans.
The former diplomat, who served in Reagan’s White House, possesses what are widely considered to be the best foreign policy credentials of a crowded Republican field that has left cold many of the party’s core voters.
Huntsman supporters say he is the best suited to get China to abandon what US politicians charge are unfair trade practices that stifle US job growth, notably charges of intellectual property theft and currency manipulation.
The former Utah governor, who won re-election in late 2008 by an amazing 78 percent of the vote before Obama tapped him as top envoy to Beijing, trails far behind Republican front-runner and fellow Mormon Mitt Romney.
Huntsman is well regarded in China because of his fluent Mandarin, which he learned as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan, and because one of his seven children is a girl, Gracie Mei, adopted from China. He was also known for preferring his bicycle to chauffeur-driven armored limousines.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique