President Chen Shui-bian (
Speaking in response to recent comments by US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage that the US is not legally bound to defend Taiwan in the case of a cross-strait war, KMT spokesman Chang Jung-kung (
The US already issued a previous warning to Taiwan, when US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in October media interviews that Taiwan was not a sovereign nation, Chang said.
The current warning from Armitage, coming on the heels of the increased pressure Taiwan is facing from China with its recently-proposed anti-secession bill, indicates that the US is trying to distance itself from Taiwan, said Chang, in a move which is disadvantageous to Taiwan.
During a television interview Monday, Armitage identified Taiwan as the biggest landmine in US-China relations. The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) does not require the US to defend Taiwan in case of Chinese military action, Armitage said in the interview, adding that the act only commits Washington to sell defensive arms to Taiwan and maintain sufficient force to deter a Chinese attack.
At the press conference yesterday, Chang urged the Chen administration to acknowledge the warning by the US and curtail pro-independence activities.
"If the government can verify, and even tell the people that the situation is serious, the US will feel their warning to us has had its intended effect. If the government continues saying there's nothing wrong, that the US is only communicating China's words, then the US will feel that its words haven't had any effect. Its next words might be even blunter, even clearer, and wound Taiwan even more deeply," Chang said yesterday.
The current situation proves that the KMT's positions on cross-strait relations and sovereignty issues have been right all along, added Chang yesterday.
In comparison with the DPP, which during the run-up to the legislative elections advocated changes to Taiwan's national title and re-writing the constitution, the KMT has staunchly supported retaining the title of the Republic of China and the retention of the status quo, Chang said.
"We knew at the time what kinds of policies a responsible party should take, and now time has proven that our direction was right," Chang said.
Part of the reason why the US has chosen to make its second warning, said Su Chi (
The first myth, said the former Mainland Affairs Council head at yesterday's press conference, is that China is too busy to wage an attack on Taiwan, due to a number of reasons, such as the 2008 Olympics to be held in Beijing.
The second myth, said Su, is that even should China attack Taiwan, the US will defend Taiwan.
Through these two myths, the Chen administration has been encouraging pan-green supporters not to be afraid, we can work for Taiwan's independence, a new constitution, a rectification of Taiwan's name, Su said.
As a result, China and the United States have a tacit understanding to debunk these two myths and are engaging on a "parallel management" of cross-strait relations, Su said, pointing to Armitage's warning and China's anti-secession bill as elements of the two countries' mutual strategy.
"They are telling the Taiwanese people not to trust Chen, he is lying to you," Su said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS