More than half a century after the US phased out its economic assistance to Taiwan, the head of the US federal government aid agency yesterday encouraged Taiwan to become a provider of development assistance across the world.
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah singled out three areas in which the US and Taiwan could work together to help create a safe and prosperous world for all the people: humanitarian assistance, food security and health.
The US would like to engage in expanded and more effective cooperation with Taiwan in delivering humanitarian assistance, eliminating hunger and child malnutrition, and investing in healthcare to reduce infectious diseases.
Photo: CNA
Leading the efforts of more than 8,000 professionals in 80 missions around the world after he was sworn in two years ago, Shah was invited by the American Institute in Taiwan to deliver a speech at the “American Footprints in Taiwan” exhibition yesterday.
In his speech, he cited a number of cases of Taiwan’s transformation from a country receiving aid from the US to a partner with the US in development cooperation.
The assistance the US offered to Taiwan and South Korea in the Cold War cost less than 1 percent of its budget, but “have paid tremendous dividends,” he said.
“Our development cooperation [with Taiwan] has evolved. We no longer provide traditional development assistance to the country. Instead, we have an active conversation about how we might work together,” he said.
Shah referred to the situation in a refugee camp on the Kenya-Somalia border to highlight the importance of international cooperation in development.
“Designed 20 years ago for about 80,000 people, today, nearly half a million refugees live in this environment. The drought in the Horn of Africa affected more than 1.3 million people, who have experienced hunger and deprivation for the last four months. Most of the world barely notices that more than 30,000 children under the age of five have died of hunger or hunger-related diseases,” he said.
More than 960 million people worldwide go to bed hungry every night, Shah said, but he added that it would be possible to reduce this number to close to 200 million “if we double development investment with real policy reform.”
A problem that had to be addressed in policy reform was to examine domestic policies as well as international standards and norms for trade, so as to achieve development results, Shah said.
“Over the last 50 or 60 years, people who led development agencies had not necessarily done as much as they should to have a voice and have a seat at the table to discuss issues like global and bilateral trade negotiations,” he said.
US President Barack Obama’s administration has tried to correct that, “but we were open-eyed about how difficult the challenge is. The next trade and development round [of talks] will be conducted in just a few weeks in Geneva, and we will put a lot of development issues on the table there,” he said.
MISINFORMATION: The generated content tends to adopt China’s official stance, such as ‘Taiwan is currently governed by the Chinese central government,’ the NSB said Five China-developed artificial intelligence (AI) language models exhibit cybersecurity risks and content biases, an inspection conducted by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The five AI tools are: DeepSeek, Doubao (豆包), Yiyan (文心一言), Tongyi (通義千問) and Yuanbao (騰訊元寶), the bureau said, advising people to remain vigilant to protect personal data privacy and corporate business secrets. The NSB said it, in accordance with the National Intelligence Services Act (國家情報工作法), has reviewed international cybersecurity reports and intelligence, and coordinated with the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau and the National Police Agency’s Criminal Investigation Bureau to conduct an inspection of China-made AI language
LIMITS: While China increases military pressure on Taiwan and expands its use of cognitive warfare, it is unwilling to target tech supply chains, the report said US and Taiwan military officials have warned that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could implement a blockade within “a matter of hours” and need only “minimal conversion time” prior to an attack on Taiwan, a report released on Tuesday by the US Senate’s China Economic and Security Review Commission said. “While there is no indication that China is planning an imminent attack, the United States and its allies and partners can no longer assume that a Taiwan contingency is a distant possibility for which they would have ample time to prepare,” it said. The commission made the comments in its annual
‘TROUBLEMAKER’: Most countries believe that it is China — rather than Taiwan — that is undermining regional peace and stability with its coercive tactics, the president said China should restrain itself and refrain from being a troublemaker that sabotages peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday. Lai made the remarks after China Coast Guard vessels sailed into disputed waters off the Senkaku Islands — known as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) in Taiwan — following a remark Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made regarding Taiwan. Takaichi during a parliamentary session on Nov. 7 said that a “Taiwan contingency” involving a Chinese naval blockade could qualify as a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, and trigger Tokyo’s deployment of its military for defense. Asked about the escalating tensions
DISPUTE: A Chinese official prompted a formal protest from Tokyo by saying that ‘the dirty head that sticks itself out must be cut off,’ after Takaichi’s Taiwan remarks Four armed China Coast Guard vessels yesterday morning sailed through disputed waters controlled by Japan, amid a diplomatic spat following Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments on Taiwan. The four ships sailed around the Senkaku Islands — known as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) to Taiwan, and which Taiwan and China also claim — on Saturday before entering Japanese waters yesterday and left, the Japan Coast Guard said. The China Coast Guard said in a statement that it carried out a “rights enforcement patrol” through the waters and that it was a lawful operation. As of the end of last month,
RSS