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.
CHAOS: Iranians took to the streets playing celebratory music after reports of Khamenei’s death on Saturday, while mourners also gathered in Tehran yesterday Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a major attack on Iran launched by Israel and the US, throwing the future of the Islamic republic into doubt and raising the risk of regional instability. Iranian state television and the state-run IRNA news agency announced the 86-year-old’s death early yesterday. US President Donald Trump said it gave Iranians their “greatest chance” to “take back” their country. The announcements came after a joint US and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites. Trump said the “heavy and pinpoint bombing” would continue through the week or as long
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
TRUST: The KMT said it respected the US’ timing and considerations, and hoped it would continue to honor its commitments to helping Taiwan bolster its defenses and deterrence US President Donald Trump is delaying a multibillion-dollar arms sale to Taiwan to ensure his visit to Beijing is successful, a New York Times report said. The weapons sales package has stalled in the US Department of State, the report said, citing US officials it did not identify. The White House has told agencies not to push forward ahead of Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), it said. The two last month held a phone call to discuss trade and geopolitical flashpoints ahead of the summit. Xi raised the Taiwan issue and urged the US to handle arms sales to
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) yesterday said that it had confirmed on Saturday night with its liquefied natural gas (LNG) and crude oil suppliers that shipments are proceeding as scheduled and that domestic supplies remain unaffected. The CPC yesterday announced the gasoline and diesel prices will rise by NT$0.2 and NT$0.4 per liter, respectively, starting Monday, citing Middle East tensions and blizzards in the eastern United States. CPC also iterated it has been reducing the proportion of crude oil imports from the Middle East and diversifying its supply sources in the past few years in response to geopolitical risks, expanding
RSS