The US Department of State is declining for the first time to address an annual industry conference on defense and security ties between the US and Taiwan, the event’s organizer said.
US arms sales to Taiwan are a major sore spot with China. Still, the State Department has sent one of its senior officials to speak at the event each year for the past nine years, US-Taiwan Business Council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers said in an interview on Tuesday.
“It’s certainly a -disappoint-ment,” he said, although a senior Pentagon official will address the conference.
The State Department has overall responsibility for the US government’s Foreign Military Sales Program, under which billions of US dollars in military hardware and services are sold abroad annually. The US Department of Defense administers the program.
This year marks the 10th in the series of such business council-organized conferences on arms sales and security ties with Taiwan. It takes place in Richmond, Virginia, on Monday and Tuesday.
The State Department had no comment on why it was sitting out the event.
It falls 10 days before the Obama administration is due to make known its policy on Taiwan’s request to buy 66 F-16C/Ds built by Lockheed Martin Corp.
Since 2006, the US has balked at providing the F-16C/D models, potentially valued at more than US$8 billion, apparently for fear of angering Beijing.
The US will be represented by Peter Lavoy, acting assistant -secretary of defense for East Asia and the Pacific. Taiwan’s delegation will be headed by Deputy Minister of National Defense Andrew Yang (楊念祖), Hammond-Chambers said.
A spokesman for US Senator John Cornyn, who is spearheading a drive to mandate an F-16 sale to Taiwan if Obama refuses, regretted the State Department’s decision.
“It’s disappointing that, despite past involvement, the State Department does not plan to participate in such a critical forum for US-Taiwan security issues,” said Drew Brandewie, Cornyn’s spokesman.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS