Although Taiwan and China have both been left out of the world’s largest naval exercise hosted by the US, the reasons for their exclusion are very different, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said yesterday.
The biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) maritime military exercises under way in Hawaii are the largest since their inception in 1971, with 22 countries, from Japan to Tonga and from Russia to Chile, participating in a five-week series of drills.
Responding to media inquiries at a routine press briefing, Bruce Linghu (令狐榮達), director-general of the Department of North American Affairs at the ministry, said the reason Taiwan was not invited to participate in the exercise seemed clear.
The US evidently did not think the time was ripe to invite Taiwan to take part in a multilateral mechanism like RIMPAC in the absence of official diplomatic relations between the two countries and was concerned about how China would react to any such invitation, Linghu said.
Nonetheless, military cooperation and strategic dialogue between Taiwan and the US have been close, he added.
Linghu said he was not in a position to comment on why China was not invited to take part in the exercise because it was a decision pertaining to US military policy.
However, the reasons the US did not invite Taiwan and China “were two different things,” he said.
Asked to comment on the view expressed by some US analysts that Taiwan should be abandoned to pursue a better US-China relationship, Linghu said that such a view in no way represented mainstream thinking on the US’ Taiwan policy.
“Various US government officials have characterized Taiwan as an economic and security ally of the US at different occasions. In addition, Taiwan is one of the countries that shares the same values as the US,” he said.
Asked about the US position on the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known as the Senkaku Islands in Japanese, Linghu said the contention by the US that the dispute falls within the scope of Article 5 of the 1960 US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security did not in any way affect Taiwan’s sovereignty claims over the area.
Although Washington takes no position on which state has sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islands, it has held the position that the Diaoyutai Islands are under -Japanese administration control since the US handed back Okinawa to Japan in 1971.
“The Republic of China maintains that it has sovereignty, as well as administrative jurisdictional power, over the Diaoyutai Islands. We have clearly expressed our position to the US and Japan since 1971 and that position has not changed,” Linghu said.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
DRONE CENTRAL: Taiwan aims to become Asia’s democratic hub for drones, with most exports focused on high-quality military-grade models, an official said Taiwan’s drone industry is expected to expand significantly by 2030, producing 100,000 units per month and exporting half of them, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Current drone production capacity is about 15,000 units per month, but the industry can quickly scale up as demand increases, Industrial Development Administration Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s drone output grew 2.5-fold last year to NT$12.9 billion (US$408.3 million) under a government program to develop the uncrewed vehicle sector, he said. The Executive Yuan in October last year approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion into domestic production of uncrewed aerial
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
WARNING: China should stop engaging in actions that undermine regional peace and stability, as it would only build resentment among people across the Strait, the CGA said China has deployed more than 100 navy, coast guard and other vessels in waters from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea and the western Pacific since US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met in Beijing, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. “In this part of the world, #China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the #StatusQuo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu wrote on X. In a separate post, he said Beijing was coercing Taiwan’s maritime domain, calling it illegal and provocative, after the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) expelled a
RSS