Recent calls urging Washington to “abandon” Taiwan to China are not a mainstream view and there is no need for the US to change its long-term policy of having good relations with China and Taiwan, a former senior US official said in Taipei yesterday.
“Some people have the opinion that as China and Taiwan are interacting more ... now it’s time that we should be reviewing what we are doing, but, why would we change our approach when it seemed to be paying dividends?” said Randy Schriver, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and now president and chief executive of the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank.
Schriver had been asked by reporters to comment on a report by the University of Virginia that makes the case for a re-evaluation of the US’ longstanding policy toward Taiwan to improve bilateral ties with China.
“My instinct is exactly the opposite,” Schriver said.
For a long time, the US’ cross-strait policies have been committed to providing Taiwan with arms so that it would have confidence to negotiate with China, and they are focused on the process of relations between Taiwan and China to ensure their peaceful development, Schriver said.
“After years, it seems to me they are happening. Why would we change our approach when it seems to be paying dividends? It doesn’t make any sense to me,” he said.
Schriver said he had “pretty strong differing views” from those arguments, including those expressed in an article by Charles Glaser, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, in which he proposes the US “abandon” Taiwan.
“There have been several such articles and several people have made the argument, but what I have found in Washington is that each article or paper is being swiftly followed by negative reaction and response from the policy community and it’s been bipartisan reaction, both Republican and Democrats,” Schriver said.
Asked how the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) under the leadership of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) differed from the previous DPP administration in terms of its China policy, Schriver said: “The US would be more comfortable with” the current DPP guided by its general principles.
Tsai and some senior DPP officials discussed the general principles of the party’s China policy with Schriver and former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage on Monday.
“There are a lot of concerns and issues with the previous DPP government, but it seems to me they moved in a direction that is more constructive and more thoughtful than what we saw in the past. I think that is a good thing,” Schriver said.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
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