Taiwan’s fears that it will become a bargaining chip between China and the US worsened on Friday after a snub by US President Donald Trump, who said he would not do anything to upset Beijing.
Trump rattled China in December last year after taking a congratulatory telephone call from President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) after his election, smashing decades of diplomatic precedent.
However, after Tsai said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday in Taipei that her administration would not exclude the possibility of another telephone call with Trump, the US president said he did not want to risk his newfound “personal relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
Photo: EPA / Taiwan Presidential Office
“I think he’s doing an amazing job as a leader and I wouldn’t want to do anything that comes in the way of that. So I would certainly want to speak to him first,” Trump told Reuters in a separate interview.
Ties between Trump and Xi seem to have warmed recently after they met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida earlier this month.
Since then, Trump has praised China for helping pressure North Korea over its nuclear and missile program.
Citing Tsai’s remarks, Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) on Friday said that it was “the president’s passive response to Reuters’ hypothetical questions.”
Tsai’s main point was to “stress that Taiwan and the US should maintain close communication and not rule out any possible form [of communication],” Huang said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) called Trump’s reaction an “embarrassment” for Taiwan.
“Trump and Xi appear to have established very good relations. Taiwan needs to tread very carefully and be alert,” he told reporters.
The comments were a “serious slap in the face,” Tamkang University political analyst Edward Chen (陳一新) said. “Tsai is throwing the ball into Washington’s court and Washington is saying no.”
However, Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟) said he thought Trump’s response was reasonable.
“Washington needs Beijing in handling the North Korea issue,” he said.
Concerns that Taiwan would become a bargaining chip were raised soon after Trump’s election, when he suggested he might abandon the “one China” policy that underpins US-China relations, unless he could strike better deals with Beijing.
He later went on to say he would honor the policy.
The US is Taiwan’s most powerful ally and arms supplier, despite having no official relations with Taipei after switching diplomatic recognition to Beijing in 1979.
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
ECONOMIC COERCION: Such actions are often inconsistently applied, sometimes resumed, and sometimes just halted, the Presidential Office spokeswoman said The government backs healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but such arrangements should not be made with political conditions attached and never be used as leverage for political maneuvering or partisan agendas, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks after China earlier in the day announced 10 new “incentive measures” for Taiwan, following a landmark meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in Beijing on Friday. The measures, unveiled by China’s Xinhua news agency, include plans to resume individual travel by residents of Shanghai and China’s Fujian
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