President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration must demonstrate to the US that it is serious about purchasing F-16C/D aircraft to boost Taiwan’s air defense capabilities and to proactively engage in regional discussions about the South China Sea dispute, former government officials and academics told a think tank forum yesterday.
About two months before the US is expected to announce its decision on Taiwan’s request to buy 66 F-16C/Ds, panelists at a forum organized by the Taiwan Brain Trust said Taiwan has not demonstrated enough determination for the US to approve the sale, which Beijing opposes.
While the Ma administration has publicly voiced its desire to buy the planes on 21 occasions since taking office in May 2008, it has failed to maintain defense budgets above 3 percent of GDP, despite one of Ma’s main campaign promises, or to budget for the 66 planes next year, former minister of national defense Michael Tsai (蔡明憲) said.
This sends a signal that Taipei is not “serious enough,” Tsai said, adding that he was not optimistic about an announcement Washington has scheduled for Oct. 1, when many analysts believe it will green-light an upgrade program for Taiwan’s 144 aging F-16A/B fleet while mothballing the F-16C/Ds request.
The order, if approved, would create 15,000 jobs at the F-16 -production line in Texas and mean billions of dollars for the US economy, but Washington will also weigh the pros and cons of the deal’s impact on its relations with Beijing, he said.
“There is still time left. The Ma administration should send a strong message through the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office [TECRO], Taiwan’s representative office in Washington, and the American Institute in Taiwan, as well as sending a budget plan to the legislature immediately to show the US that it is serious about the procurement,” Tsai said.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration began discussing a F-16C/D purchase with the Pentagon in 2005, when then-US president George W. Bush and the Department of Defense tended to favor the deal, provided Taiwan had the budget, Tsai said.
However, the US Department of State had second thoughts because of China’s role in assisting the US in Afghanistan and over efforts to limit North Korea’s nuclear program, he said, while Washington’s ties with Taipei worsened during the last half of former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) second term.
Bush wanted to complete the arms package, which included six PAC-3 air defense systems, eight diesel-electric submarines and 12 P-3C marine patrol aircraft before putting the F-16C/Ds on the agenda, said Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), who served as representative to Washington from 2007 to 2008.
Citing a Washington Times -report on Tuesday that said TECRO “has not lobbied very strongly for new F-16s or the upgrades of old jets,” Wu said the story “carried some weight” because “traditionally, the newspaper has been a channel for US officials to send messages to Taiwan.”
“Rhetoric is not good enough for the US. The US will also monitor what you have done and what you are doing,” Wu said.
Chang Kuo-cheng (張國城), a senior councilor at Taiwan Thinktank and former secretary of the deputy minister of national defense, said the US was unlikely to approve the sale because of its complex relations with China.
“More than anything else, the US is not likely to approve the sale on Oct. 1 — the People’s Republic of China’s national day,” Chang said.
NO LIVERPOOL TRIP: Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who won a gold medal in the boxing at the Paris Olympics, was embroiled in controversy about her gender at that event Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) will not attend this year’s World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, England, due to a lack of response regarding her sex tests from the organizer, World Boxing. The national boxing association on Monday said that it had submitted all required tests to World Boxing, but had not received a response as of Monday, the departure day for the championships. It said the decision for Lin to skip the championships was made to protect its athletes, ensuring they would not travel to the UK without a guarantee of participation. Lin, who won a gold medal in the women’s 57kg boxing
RESPONSE: The transit sends a message that China’s alignment with other countries would not deter the West from defending freedom of navigation, an academic said Canadian frigate the Ville de Quebec and Australian guided-missile destroyer the Brisbane transited the Taiwan Strait yesterday morning, the first time the two nations have conducted a joint freedom of navigation operation. The Canadian and Australian militaries did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Ministry of National Defense declined to confirm the passage, saying only that Taiwan’s armed forces had deployed surveillance and reconnaissance assets, along with warships and combat aircraft, to safeguard security across the Strait. The two vessels were observed transiting northward along the eastern side of the Taiwan Strait’s median line, with Japan being their most likely destination,
‘NOT ALONE’: A Taiwan Strait war would disrupt global trade routes, and could spark a worldwide crisis, so a powerful US presence is needed as a deterrence, a US senator said US Senator Deb Fischer on Thursday urged her colleagues in the US Congress to deepen Washington’s cooperation with Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific partners to contain the global security threat from China. Fischer and other lawmakers recently returned from an official trip to the Indo-Pacific region, where they toured US military bases in Hawaii and Guam, and visited leaders, including President William Lai (賴清德). The trip underscored the reality that the world is undergoing turmoil, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region is crucial to the security interests of the US and its partners, she said. Her visit to Taiwan demonstrated ways the
The US has revoked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) authorization to freely ship essential gear to its main Chinese chipmaking base, potentially curtailing its production capabilities at that older-generation facility. American officials recently informed TSMC of their decision to end the Taiwanese chipmaker’s so-called validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing site. The action mirrors steps the US took to revoke VEU designations for China facilities owned by Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc. The waivers are set to expire in about four months. “TSMC has received notification from the US Government that our VEU authorization for TSMC Nanjing
RSS