People First Party (PFP) leader James Soong's (
But the ex-official, former deputy assistant secretary of state in charge of Taiwan and China issues, Randall Schriver, said that other than that, the overall impact of the elections on bilateral relations would be "minimal."
Meanwhile, the State Department had little to say about the elections.
"We congratulate the people of Taiwan for participating in democracy," one department official said. "[But] we do not comment on internal Taiwan affairs."
Schriver made his comments at a seminar at the Heritage Foundation on the results of the Taipei and Kaohsiung elections.
Soong and the PFP have long been opponents of the arms package, seeing the purchase as too costly and too provocative to China.
With Soong and the PFP weakened, he said, "to the extent that you believe that the KMT's [Chinese Nationalist Party] inability to get a consensus view among the blue camp behind either the supplemental [arms] budget or increases to the regular budget, and that Soong was somehow blackmailing them or playing politics with the arms package, I think he will be marginalized a bit more and this will give the KMT the ability to perhaps achieve a consensus behind the package."
"[This] would be a tremendous boost to US-Taiwan relations from Washington's perspective," Shriver said.
Overall, he said that the election results would not have much of an impact on bilateral relations.
"This is a vote for the status quo and stability," he said.
If the KMT had won both elections, he said, that could have hurt relations with Washington.
The victories would require changes in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leadership and "require Chen to do something to respond to the pressure," whether to take a leave of absence, or delegate more power to the premier.
"The management of our bilateral business would have been a little more difficult if our primary interlocutor in the executive branch was under so much turmoil," Schriver said.
"The US cares about a manageable cross-strait environment, not marked by radical moves or surprises," Schriver said.
"If the DPP had suffered deep losses, it might have prompted a more aggressive agenda, a more robust independence-minded agenda, if the DPP were to feel more desperate, or feel more confident," Schriver said.
US-Taiwan relations would benefit as a result of the fact that the elections were successful, boosting Taiwan's democracy, he said.
"The quality of US-Taiwan relations is predicated on a strong democracy in Taiwan," he said.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater