The US has made it clear to China that it should stop coercion and resume dialogue with Taiwan, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said yesterday, after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday last week reasserted that China has the right to use force against Taiwan.
“The United States has a deep and abiding interest in cross-strait peace and stability. Any resolution of cross-strait differences must be peaceful and based on the will of the people on both sides,” AIT spokeswoman Amanda Mansour told local media when asked to comment on Xi’s speech.
“The United States has made clear to Beijing that it should stop its coercion and resume dialogue with the democratically elected administration on Taiwan,” she said, without giving further details.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
“As we have said many times before, Taiwan is a democratic success story, a reliable partner and a force for good in the world,” she added.
The AIT represents US interests in Taiwan in the absence of official diplomatic ties.
Mansour’s comments came after US National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis on Monday supported Taiwan in a tweet.
Xi on Wednesday last week gave an speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of China’s “Message to Compatriots in Taiwan.”
Xi said that China would be willing to talk with any party in Taiwan to push forward the process of peaceful unification on the basis of the “one China” principle.
However, “we make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means” to that end, Xi said.
China would not target compatriots in Taiwan, but focus on the interference of external forces, as well as the small number of Taiwanese independence activists, he added.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday on Twitter expressed her gratitude to the US for its support.
“I thank the #AIT for supporting democracy & the democratically-elected government in #Taiwan. To those who #SpeakUpForTaiwan, thank you!” Tsai tweeted.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head