Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) held sensitive closed-door talks — which were expected to include Taiwan — with US President Barack Obama in the White House on Thursday evening.
The two leaders met in the Oval Office and later had a private dinner joined by US Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Advisor Susan Rice.
Xi and his wife were to be formally welcomed to the White House for an official state visit yesterday, but sources said that the most contentious and difficult issues in the US-China relationship were to be discussed during the more relaxed Thursday session.
Photo: EPA
“While formal meetings where each side recites carefully worded talking points and a long list of issues are important, the unscripted [Thursday] meal has the potential to allow the two leaders to break through on the most nettlesome issues,” the New York Times said yesterday.
Along with Taiwan, they were expected to address cybersecurity, island-building in the South China Sea, intellectual property protections and human rights.
Xi and his team flew into the US capital from a 48-hour stay in Seattle, where they toured a Boeing plant, visited Microsoft and dropped by local schools.
Speaking at the Heritage Foundation shortly before Xi landed in Washington, US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia Chairman Cory Gardner said that Taiwan should be part of the solution to national security concerns in East Asia.
“Maritime security issues and international cooperation will be a part and a piece of the solution and while I have mentioned the relationship between the US and Japan and South Korea as a tri-national alliance, Taiwan is very much a part of that solution as well,” he said.
Earlier, Gardner said that Beijing’s regional policy had taken a destabilizing, aggressive and troubling turn and that its actions in the East and South China seas were contrary to international law.
He said they imposed an increased risk of future conflict.
“The US must have a consistent and assertive diplomatic engagement with China to reinforce that these rogue activities fall outside of accepted international norms,” said Gardner.
“This is also where we must work with our strongest allies in the region,” he added. “A strong and reinvigorated trilateral alliance within the region — US, South Korea and Japan — should be united as one force for freedom and prosperity. Strengthening this relationship will send a strong message to China that great nations with the same values and principles speak with one voice,” he said.
Evan Moore, an analyst for the Foreign Policy Initiative think tank, said that Xi’s visit came “in the midst of an extraordinarily contentious period in US-China relations.”
He said that Chinese hackers had stolen the personal data of more than 20 million former and current US federal employees; the Chinese armed forces were building extensive military facilities in the South China Sea; China was using torture and imprisonment to suppress dissent; and the instability of the Chinese economy was causing trouble across the globe.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique