The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said yesterday that it had no formal announcement to make regarding a change of director and that the present director, Stephen Young, would announce his departure at the appropriate time.
A Central News Agency (CNA) report from Washington said that Young, who has been head of the US de facto embassy since March 2006, was scheduled to leave the post this summer and would be replaced by William Stanton, a seasoned foreign services officer.
Stanton is presently deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Seoul.
AIT press officer Lawrence Walker said AIT did not have any formal announcement on Young’s successor and that Young would announce his date of departure when he saw fit.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Deputy Spokesman James Chang (章記平) said the ministry was aware of reports regarding Stanton’s possible appointment, but had not received any formal notification from the US government.
“We will not comment on any speculation until we have been formally notified by the US government,” he said.
In its report, CNA cited an anonymous source as saying that the chances of former AIT chairman Richard Bush taking over from Young had been greatly reduced for personal reasons.
In his 30-plus years as a diplomat, Stanton’s assignments have included minister counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Beijing, deputy director for the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs, special assistant for East Asia and Pacific Affairs for the Under Secretary for Political Affairs and chief of internal political reporting in Beijing.
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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