If the Bush administration desires an end to Taiwan's development of indigenous missiles like the Hsiung Feng (Brave Wind) IIE, the US must be consistent in its commitment to Taiwan, said Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, in a special commentary piece in Defense News.
In the report, titled "Taiwan Goes it Alone," Hammond-Chambers said that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice presidential candidate Vincent Siew's (
Ideally, from the US point of view, Siew would have informed the Bush administration that after four years of obstruction, the KMT had reached consensus on arms sales, including the highly contentious Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles, he wrote.
"Instead, Siew was greeted by administration officials who lectured him about their concerns on President Chen Shui-bian's [陳水扁] referendum on joining the UN under the name Taiwan, as well as Taiwan's ongoing efforts on its counterstrike missile program," Hammond-Chambers wrote.
He said Taiwan's objective has always been to develop counterstrike weapons for tactical, not strategic, application in the event of a conflict with China.
"There are no Taiwan generals threatening to level Shanghai or Guangzhou," he said, adding that during talks with the US a few years back, Taiwanese military officials agreed to only use conventional armed weapons against military targets in response to a Chinese first strike and to do so only after receiving authorization.
He criticized the Bush administration for being an "irresponsible player" in cross-strait relations, saying Washington's view that a counter-strike capability for Taiwan would hurt US interests was wrong.
He argued that on the modern battlefield, it is nearly impossible to distinguish between an offensive and a defensive system, and "this fact alone makes the US objections specious, leading Americans to be viewed as hypocritical and pro-China at worst."
He said the situation between Beijing and Taipei might be assuaged if a KMT president is elected next month. But such a victory would not guarantee Taiwan's security because China will never accept anything less than complete integration of Taiwan into its jurisdiction -- a term that would definitely be unacceptable to most Taiwanese.
He concluded by saying if the US wants to deter Taiwan from developing indigenous missiles like the Hsiung Feng-IIE, Washington must remain consistently committed to Taiwan's security.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,