Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Monday said that her “core goal” for the nation was “a more consistent and sustainable relationship with China.”
Tsai made the statement in a bylined commentary published by the Wall Street Journal as she flew into Washington for a key five-day visit to the US capital.
Tsai called for “open channels of communication, both with China’s leadership and the Taiwanese people.”
Photo: Tsao Yu-fen, Taipei Times
She faces a whirlwind of meetings with officials in US President Barack Obama’s administration, US Congress and the US Department of State, as well as think tanks and Taiwanese-American organizations.
It will be her main opportunity to convince Washington that if she wins next year’s presidential election, she will follow policies that will maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
Tsai is in the US for a total of 12 days and has already visited Los Angeles and Chicago.
Tsai’s Wall Street Journal article laid out the platform she is presenting in Washington.
“My priority will be to implement a transparent process to enhance trust and cooperation across the Taiwan Strait,” she wrote.
“Through principled engagements, joint initiatives and dialogue, I will ensure that the spirit of cooperation that has guided the betterment of China-Taiwan relations continues,” Tsai wrote.
She wrote that 36 years ago, the US Congress enacted the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and launched a “historic friendship.”
“I have no doubt that our mutual interests in the region’s peace and prosperity will further strengthen these bonds and ensure that they will endure for many decades to come,” Tsai wrote.
While the US is Taiwan’s most important strategic partner, she said that the nation must also expand its contributions toward a more promising future for the region.
Tsai wrote that Taiwan needs to articulate an open and forward-looking strategy for the future that is “fundamentally premised” on robust economic, defense and people-to-people relationships with the US in parallel with a comprehensive and principled engagement with China.
Tsai outlined a four-pronged foreign policy based on multifaceted cooperation with the US, identifying and participating in international projects, protecting Taiwan’s economic autonomy through trade diversification and enhancing principled cooperation with China.
“The net impact of this strategy will not only depend on the successful execution of each pillar, but on how we are able to draw linkages between the four elements and put forth a comprehensive paradigm for Taiwan’s international role,” she wrote.
Tsai wrote that she was committed to enhancing cooperation with the US on joint military training, exercises and defense-industrial cooperation.
“In addition to strengthening our already extensive ties in these traditional security areas, it is equally important for Taiwan to support the region’s capabilities to address nontraditional security threats, highlighted by the growing challenges presented by climate change and the increasing frequency of natural disasters across the Asia-Pacific,” she wrote. “I am committed to advancing an open dialogue with the US, China, Japan, South Korea and other like-minded nations on how we can fortify the region’s humanitarian and natural-disaster relief architecture and capabilities.”
Tsai said that Taiwan must articulate a stronger trade agenda, necessitating changes in how the nation conducts business and establishes strong frameworks to bolster investor confidence.
“In the near term, ensuring that Taiwan is ready for future candidacy into the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other regional economic agreements will be an important cornerstone of my economic policy,” she said.
In response, an unnamed source from the Presidential Office asked why has Tsai not mentioned “maintaining the ‘status quo’” as she did in Taiwan, and whether she takes different stances when in Taiwan and abroad.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS