The George W. Bush administration was preparing a strong reaffirmation of Washington's commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and US arms sales to Taiwan, as a key congressional committee held a hearing yesterday to explore the future of US-Taiwan relations and the act.
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia James Kelly and his Pentagon counterpart, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Peter Rodman were slated to testify at the hearing, which was held by the House International Relations Committee.
The hearing was called to mark the 25th anniversary of the TRA, which was enacted in April 1979 after the Carter administration switched diplomatic relations from Taipei to Beijing.
A major provision of the act, which regulates the unofficial relations between the US and Taiwan, requires the US to supply Taiwan with sufficient arms to defend against hostilities from China.
The hearing also reflects Washington's continued concerns over the cross-strait policies President Chen Shui-bian (
The administration has no plans to alter the act, officials have said recently. Vice President Dick Cheney made that message clear during his visit to China last week, in the face of strong pressure by the leaders in Beijing to reduce US arms sales and otherwise lessen its commitment to support Taiwan.
There is "no change" in either the US policy of adherence to the act or its arms sales policy, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said as Cheney was winding up his trip last week.
"The Taiwan Relations Act is US law, and I would note that our sales of defense equipment to Taiwan are also governed by US law, and there is no intention of changing the law or our compliance with the law," he told reporters.
Committee staffers also delivered the same message in recent days, brushing off suggestions that have been raised from time to time that the act should be re-examined in view of changes in the situation over the 25 years that have passed since the law was enacted.
In addition to Kelly and Rodman, former American Institute in Taiwan managing director Richard Bush was also scheduled to testify.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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