Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday that the DPP would remain cautious and observe the development of relations between Washington and Beijing.
The DPP was not pleased with a joint statement that was issued last year by US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
The party also regretted that the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) was not mentioned in the joint statement this time, said Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), director of the DPP’s international affairs department.
“Fortunately, Obama mentioned it at the press conference, otherwise the DPP would have been uneasy and would have voiced its concern,” Hsiao said.
Speaking at a White House joint press conference, Obama said: “I reaffirmed our commitment to a ‘one China’ policy based on the three US-China communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act.”
Taipei has taken Obama’s statement as a renewed commitment by the US to Taiwan’s security.
Meanwhile, DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) said that Taiwan should prepare for the possibility of Hu taking the opportunity during his US visit to try to derail US arms sales to Taiwan, amid signs of warming US-China relations.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方), however, said that Taiwan should be optimistic about the arms sales in light of Obama’s reiteration of his commitment to the TRA.
Lin said he thought it was “very likely” that two or three months after Hu returns home, Obama would respond positively to Taiwan’s request to upgrade its fleet of F-16A/B fighter jets.
KMT Legislator Justin Chou (周守訓) of the Foreign and National Defense Committee lauded the remark made by Obama, calling it “the best result.”
Chou said that Obama’s avoidance of arms sales was “carefully planned,” because mentioning the arms deal at the conference would be too sensitive.
Additional reporting by Flora Wang
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