A member of the US House of Representatives on Friday urged the US administration to review its policy toward Taiwan in order to secure its interests in Asia.
In an article published in the Examiner newspaper in Washington, Representative Steve Chabot, a Republican from Ohio, warned that Taiwan's status as a democracy separate from China will be severely threatened over the next five years, because China's attack against President Chen Shui-bian (
"Should Taiwan decide to move in the direction of accommodation with the People's Republic of China, US interests in Asia will steadily be eroded," Chabot said.
"Small adjustments toward Beijing would likely continue over time, and soon enough, US control of vital sea-lanes would be in jeopardy and other vital American interests would suffer," he said.
Chabot said that it is China's military buildup, not Chen, that is changing the status quo across the Taiwan Strait and that Beijing is the real troublemaker in cross-strait relations.
While China has deployed nearly 800 missiles targeting Taiwan and enacted the "Anti-Secession" Law, the US has been distracted by more immediate concerns elsewhere in the world, he said.
Chabot said that the US' restriction of high-level exchanges with Taiwan "makes no sense."
"A policy that limits America's ability to appropriately balance our interests in Asia undermines our foreign policy objectives," he said.
Chabot noted that to address the problem, he and some of his colleagues have tried to re-establish the cross-strait balance with efforts such as calling for increased discourse between senior political and mil-itary leaders of Taiwan and the US.
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