The US should sell Taiwan F-16C/D aircraft because doing so would be in its best interest, a US lawmaker said yesterday at an international security conference in Taipei.
“We need to empower Taiwan” in the face of China’s huge military buildup, US Representative Peter Roskam said in a comment on cross-strait issues at the first session of the ROC (Taiwan)-US-Japan Trilateral Conference: Security Dialogue.
The one-day conference, hosted by Taiwan’s Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies and the Washington-based think tank Project 2049 Institute, marked the first time lawmakers from the three countries have met to discuss ways to strengthen regional security.
“Taiwan has to be strong,” Roskam said, despite the agreements it has signed with China and the expanded cross-strait economic exchanges of recent years.
According to Roskam, the Republican chief deputy whip in the US House of Representatives, “nothing good happens when Taiwan is uncertain.”
In addition, he said, Taiwan is a democracy worthy of US support. He added his belief that “the sale of the F-16s” is the “straightforward way” to demonstrate such support.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said at the conference’s opening ceremony that many countries are working to enhance trade with China, as the country is growing so fast economically.
However, China lacks transparency in its military buildup and that makes its neighbors uneasy, he said.
Yang added he hoped Japan and the US would facilitate Taiwan’s participation in regional security arrangements in East Asia.
“The lack of Taiwan’s participation in such a mechanism will create a loophole in the maintenance of security in the region,” he said.
Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of National Defense Andrew Yang (楊念祖) also expressed hope that Taiwan could strengthen exchanges with Japan and the US in related areas to contribute to long-term peace in Asia.
He also reiterated Taiwan’s ongoing efforts to maintain its self-defense capabilities, which he said was also vital for preserving peace.
Late last month, the US government announced that it would help upgrade Taiwan’s existing 145 F-16A/Bs rather than sell the more advanced F-16C/Ds Taipei has repeatedly requested since 2006. According to US government officials, however, the sale of the F-16C/Ds to Taiwan is still under consideration.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods