US President Barack Obama reportedly declared his “strong commitment” to the Three Joint Communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act during his White House summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
While details of discussions concerning Taiwan remain secret, Obama is understood to have firmly supported Taiwan.
A congressional source told the Taipei Times that Xi raised the subject and Obama responded.
Photo courtesy of Formosan Association for Public Affairs
The source did not know if Taiwan’s upcoming presidential elections were mentioned.
About 600 anti-China protesters — 60 of them Taiwanese waving placards and banners — could be heard clearly as they chanted slogans from a nearby park.
“I reiterated my strong commitment as well to our ‘one China’ policy based on the Three Joint Communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act,” Obama said on Friday at a joint press conference in the White House garden.
Xi did not mention Taiwan at the news conference.
The two leaders took few questions and none of them concerned Taiwan.
The major announcement to emerge from the news conference was that the US and China vowed to fight global warming and halt commercial cybertheft.
At the joint news conference, Obama chided China on its treatment of dissidents and insisted hacking attacks on US firms must stop, even as he thanked Xi for his commitment on climate change.
The world’s top two economic powers are also its biggest polluters, and campaigners hailed their commitment to reduce emissions as a key step toward a global climate pact before the end of the year.
Provocatively, Obama directly cited the name of Beijing’s number one bugbear — the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader seen by China as a criminal separatist — at the leaders’ joint news conference.
“Even as we recognize Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China, we continue to encourage Chinese authorities to preserve the religious and cultural identity of the Tibetan people and to engage the Dalai Lama or his representatives,” Obama said.
The two delegations promised not to spy on each other’s private enterprises for commercial gain, but here again, Obama used tough language, declaring: “I indicated it has to stop.”
Xi said that “China strongly opposes and combats the theft of commercial secrets and other kinds of hacking attacks.”
The Chinese leader also firmly pushed back on human rights criticism, warning that reform would come on China’s own timetable and without undermining its stability.
“We must recognize that countries have different historical processes and realities, that we need to respect people of all countries in the rights to choose their own development path independently,” he said.
Against this background, the agreement on climate change — both countries signed a “joint vision” ahead of December’s UN climate summit in Paris, and China committed to a domestic “cap and trade” carbon exchange — was all the more notable.
China is also to set aside US$3.1 billion for a fund to help developing countries fight climate change.
“If the world’s two largest economies, energy consumers and carbon emitters come together like this, then there is no reason for other countries, whether developed or developing, to not do so as well,” Obama said.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commended both countries for the “significant steps” they pledged to take on the climate.
“This announcement bolsters prospects for a universal, meaningful agreement in Paris this year,” the secretary-general’s spokesman said.
Shortly after the summit meetings closed, the US-Taiwan Business Council issued a statement signed by its president, Rupert Hammond-Chambers, that said “for the first time in a number of years,” Xi was worried about Taiwan.
It said the Democratic Progressive Party was likely to win the January presidential election and “this realization is causing growing panic among those vested in China’s vision of unification with Taiwan.”
The statement said that the US had slowed its engagement with Taiwan to a crawl and demonstrated a lack of will and intent to maintain peace and security in the Taiwan Strait.
Taipei’s underinvestment in Taiwan’s national defense has to end, Hammond-Chambers said.
“No US government can reasonably undertake support for new defensive capabilities if Taiwan takes its national defense less seriously than the US does,” the statement said.
People can preregister to receive their NT$10,000 (US$325) cash distributed from the central government on Nov. 5 after President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday signed the Special Budget for Strengthening Economic, Social and National Security Resilience, the Executive Yuan told a news conference last night. The special budget, passed by the Legislative Yuan on Friday last week with a cash handout budget of NT$236 billion, was officially submitted to the Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon. People can register through the official Web site at https://10000.gov.tw to have the funds deposited into their bank accounts, withdraw the funds at automated teller
PEACE AND STABILITY: Maintaining the cross-strait ‘status quo’ has long been the government’s position, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan is committed to maintaining the cross-strait “status quo” and seeks no escalation of tensions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday, rebutting a Time magazine opinion piece that described President William Lai (賴清德) as a “reckless leader.” The article, titled “The US Must Beware of Taiwan’s Reckless Leader,” was written by Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Defense Priorities think tank. Goldstein wrote that Taiwan is “the world’s most dangerous flashpoint” amid ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said that the situation in the Taiwan Strait has become less stable
CONCESSION: A Shin Kong official said that the firm was ‘willing to contribute’ to the nation, as the move would enable Nvidia Crop to build its headquarters in Taiwan Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽) yesterday said it would relinquish land-use rights, or known as surface rights, for two plots in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投), paving the way for Nvidia Corp to expand its office footprint in Taiwan. The insurer said it made the decision “in the interest of the nation’s greater good” and would not seek compensation from taxpayers for potential future losses, calling the move a gesture to resolve a months-long impasse among the insurer, the Taipei City Government and the US chip giant. “The decision was made on the condition that the Taipei City Government reimburses the related
FRESH LOOK: A committee would gather expert and public input on the themes and visual motifs that would appear on the notes, the central bank governor said The central bank has launched a comprehensive redesign of New Taiwan dollar banknotes to enhance anti-counterfeiting measures, improve accessibility and align the bills with global sustainability standards, Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) told a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee yesterday. The overhaul would affect all five denominations — NT$100, NT$200, NT$500, NT$1,000 and NT$2,000 notes — but not coins, Yang said. It would be the first major update to the banknotes in 24 years, as the current series, introduced in 2001, has remained in circulation amid rapid advances in printing technology and security standards. “Updating the notes is essential to safeguard the integrity
RSS