President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Friday said the reason Taiwan seeks to purchase high-performance combat aircraft from the US is to maintain its self-defense capability.
“Not only does the United States understand that, we know it, and we hope mainland China understands it, too,” Ma said in a Presidential Office meeting with visitors from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank.
The guests included retired US Navy admiral Timothy Keating, as well as Bonnie Glaser and Alan Romberg, specialists on Taiwan Strait affairs.
Ma said that amid improving cross-strait ties, there remained more than 1,000 missiles deployed in China aimed at Taiwan.
This “worries” Taiwan, he said, adding that he hopes Taiwan and the US would not only maintain their security ties, but strengthen the links.
Taiwan’s request to purchase advanced combat aircraft such as F-16C/Ds is not to enhance its offensive capability, but to replace older fighters, which means the country’s fleet can continue to be capable of defending Taiwan, Ma said.
“We will not ask Americans to fight a war for Taiwan” because Taiwan is determined to defend itself, Ma said.
Taiwan is also confident that the tensions in the Strait will continue to decrease, Ma said, adding that as outlined in the Taiwan Relations Act, Washington would keep its promise in terms of arm sales. He called the US promise “crucial” for continued peace in the Strait and stability in East Asia.
Ma also talked about the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement Taiwan signed with China in late June.
He said the trade pact had helped improve cross-strait relations and at the same time encouraged Taiwan’s other major trading partners to seek deals that are similar to free-trade agreements with Taiwan.
Taiwan and China spent more than six months in talks and negotiations on the agreement, Ma said. Thanks to the talks, the two sides had deeper and more comprehensive contact with one another than ever before.
“Basically, they were a kind of confidence-building measure,” he told the visitors, who are involved in the think tank’s program on cross-strait confidence-building measures.
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
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
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