President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has adopted a policy of “accommodating” Beijing, a former US official told a congressional hearing on Chinese military and economic aggression.
John Tkacik, a former US diplomat and expert on Chinese and Taiwanese affairs, testified that over the past few months, there had been “an entirely new change in the political posture of Taiwan.”
He said that under the Ma administration, Taiwan now “basically agrees” that it is part of China.
Tkacik, who served as the US Department of State’s chief China analyst, added that once Taiwan makes that choice, “you are looking at Taiwan moving out of the column of the community of democracies.”
Taiwan could become part of China’s security interests, he said.
Tkacik said that Taiwan still had a sophisticated basing structure, including phased array radar systems designed to scan China for ballistic missile launches, but in future the radar systems could be turned around to scan the Western Pacific and monitor US military activity.
Similarly, Taiwan’s deep-water ports could become home to China’s diesel-electric submarines, he said.
“There is also a possibility of China-Taiwan cooperation against Japan and the United States in the East China Sea,” he said. “This is what we are looking at. President Ma now has a very clear China policy, but he does not have an America policy.”
Tkacik told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing that under US President Barack Obama and former US president George W. Bush, Washington had “cut Taiwan loose.”
“Taiwan is now in a phase where they feel they have no support in the United States. The US government is not supporting a Taiwan that is part of the network of Asian democracies,” he said. “When faced with that kind of situation, the Taiwanese voters say there is no sense in voting for any kind of government that is going to challenge China because we are not going to get any support.”
“If that were to change, it would make a big difference in Taiwan’s electoral process,” he said.
As of now, Tkacik said, the government in Taipei is adopting policies that are moving “inexorably” toward China.
Larry Wortzel, a member of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told the committee that he thought Tkacik was right.
However, he stressed that Ma was acting with the support of the legislature and voters.
US Representative Howard Berman, the ranking Democrat on the committee, asked those testifying if the Obama administration’s offer to upgrade Taiwan’s aging F-16 aircraft was sufficient for the nation’s self-defense.
Dean Cheng (成斌), a research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, said the upgrades were directed at aircraft that were already 20 years old.
“Every aircraft that is being upgraded is being pulled off the line for an extended period of time. That means the net number of aircraft that Taiwan can put in the air is reduced,” Cheng said. “The proposed sale of new F-16C/Ds would replace aircraft that were designed in the 1950s.”
Cheng said that not selling the F-16C/Ds to Taiwan meant the Taiwanese air force was being reduced through “sheer attrition and age,” without China having to do anything.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never