President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said Taiwan was unlikely to engage in an arms race with China and would instead seek a balance of military power across the Taiwan Strait through “innovative” and “asymmetric” approaches.
“The cross-strait standoff has continued for more than six decades. Although the Chinese mainland is still actively beefing up its military might, we see no need and are not likely to follow suit,” Ma said in a speech delivered at a meeting of the Overseas Compatriots Affairs Commission.
“What we should do is use our soft power to reduce tensions and lead cross-strait relations to move on the track of peaceful development,” Ma said at the annual conference of commissioners.
In pursuing a cross-strait balance of military power, Ma said, his administration would focus on innovative and asymmetric strategies to build up an elite deterrent force to avert war.
“We will continue working hard to boost peaceful development and ease tensions so that a cross-strait military conflict will become increasingly less likely,” Ma told the conference.
By an asymmetric approach, Ma was apparantly referring to asymmetric warfare — where the two sides’ military power, resources and strategies differ significantly. Such an approach might not involve military action, but rather tactics of unconventional warfare in which the “weaker” side uses strategies that offset its deficiencies in military might.
In an encouraging sign, Ma said, significant progress has been made in relations with China over the past two-and-a-half years under his administration as efforts have been made to promote a cross-strait detente.
At a different setting yesterday, Ma said he welcomed the friendship toward Taiwan shown by visiting US Congressman Elton Gallegly and made another pitch to get Washington to sell Taiwan advanced F-16C/D fighter aircraft.
In a meeting with Gallegly at the Presidential Office, Ma said he was moved by the Republican representative’s visit to Taiwan so soon after winning re-election to the House of Representatives last Tuesday, seeing it as a sign of the Californian’s deep friendship and concern for the country.
Gallegly, a ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Europe of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, arrived in Taiwan on Friday for a week-long visit.
During the meeting, Ma -discussed his administration’s efforts to warm what he called “long-frozen cross-Taiwan Strait relations” and the results of the efforts.
He also spoke of the importance he attached to Taiwan-US ties. The president described bilateral links between the two countries as solid, adding that Taiwan and the US were expected to hold talks under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement by the end of the year for the first time since July 2007.
Ma also reiterated Taiwan’s desire to purchase F-16C/D aircraft to maintain the country’s defense capabilities and expressed the hope that Taiwan could be included in the US visa waiver program and sign an extradition agreement with Washington.
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