Every minute that Taiwan is separate from China the likelihood increases that the nation will remain separate from China, Arthur Waldron, a professor of international relations at the University of Pennsylvania, told a forum on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
He said he had great difficulty envisioning “in nuts and bolts terms” how unification would ever occur.
The forum entitled “Is Taiwan Defendable?” was held in a House of Representatives meeting room, and it was organized by the International Assessment and Strategy Center (IASC) and attended by congressional aides.
“Would Taiwan stop having a president? Would it stop having elections? Would it stop having a legislature?” Waldron asked.
“I just don’t see any of those things happening,” he said. “My own view is that China is probably going to change first.”
“In 30 years will there still be a standing committee of the politburo in Beijing?” he asked.
“I think it is quite unlikely, but I think that in 30 years there will still be an elected president of Taiwan,” he said.
Waldron was closing the forum in which Mark Stokes, executive director of the think tank Project 2049, discussed how submarines could change the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait; Richard Fisher, a senior fellow at IASC, argued that missile technology could deter invasion; and John Tkacik, another senior IASC fellow, discussed the legal and policy implications of expanding US weapons sales to Taiwan.
Waldron said there was currently an attempt within the “foreign policy elite” to normalize the US relationship with China and make it the same as the US relationship with democratic countries.
He said there was a suggestion that if only the US would do “the right sort of things” then all would be well with China, but he argued that if Taiwan was “stripped away,” then Japan would become isolated and the US would no longer be able to count upon Tokyo to follow either a peaceful or a pro-US policy.
He said that if Japan and South Korea were defendable, then Taiwan was just as defendable.
“Taiwan should be defended, unless we want to get a reputation for brutally abandoning our allies and being totally unreliable,” he said.
Stokes said that Taiwan had been on a 40-year quest to buy 10 to 12 diesel-electric submarines and that no other weapons system would do more to deter China from using force against the nation.
He said that submarines had the best chance of survival should China attack and they would “significantly complicate” any Chinese attempts at a blockade or invasion.
However, Stokes was not optimistic that the US or any other nation would sell submarines to Taiwan and supported the idea of Taiwan building its own.
Fisher said that following the decision by US President Barack Obama’s administration not to sell F-16C/D aircraft to Taiwan, there had been an “uptick” in pessimism.
He said that increasingly some Americans are saying Taiwan is not defendable and that at some point it would have to reach a political settlement with China.
Taiwan, he said, would lose its political freedoms “once the PRC [People’s Republic of China] gets its claws into that society and tears it apart.”
Fisher said there was an assumption that Taiwan would not be able to purchase enough military hardware to deter an attack by China, but this was not necessarily true.
He said if the US would not sell advanced F-16s to Taiwan, it should consider other weapons including a “Sensor Fuzed Munition” that is about the size of a hamburger.
It is fired as part of a missile or artillery shell, departs from the shell in mid-air, orientates itself and then, traveling at five times the speed of sound, finds its target and cuts right through it.
Fisher said the US had agreed to sell 20,000 of these to India for the price of about four F-16C/Ds.
“If Taiwan had 20,000 of these weapons it would greatly increase the island’s ability to deter a Chinese invasion force,” Fisher said.
Tkacik analyzed the laws governing US arms sales to Taiwan and concluded: “The US has a law, passed by Congress, that says it will make available to Taiwan whatever the heck it needs to defend itself. We are required to give them what they need. The world itself is a little different, but that is the law.”
‘NON-RED’: Taiwan and Ireland should work together to foster a values-driven, democratic economic system, leveraging their complementary industries, Lai said President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday expressed hopes for closer ties between Taiwan and Ireland, and that both countries could collaborate to create a values-driven, democracy-centered economic system. He made the remarks while meeting with an Irish cross-party parliamentary delegation visiting Taiwan. The delegation, led by John McGuinness, deputy speaker of the Irish house of representatives, known as the Dail, includes Irish lawmakers Malcolm Byrne, Barry Ward, Ken O’Flynn and Teresa Costello. McGuinness, who chairs the Ireland-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association, is a friend of Taiwan, and under his leadership, the association’s influence has grown over the past few years, Lai said. Ireland is
FINAL COUNTDOWN: About 50,000 attended a pro-recall rally yesterday, while the KMT and the TPP plan to rally against the recall votes today Democracy activists, together with arts and education representatives, yesterday organized a motorcade, while thousands gathered on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei in the evening in support of tomorrow’s recall votes. Recall votes for 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu City mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) are to be held tomorrow, while recall votes for seven other KMT lawmakers are scheduled for Aug. 23. The afternoon motorcade was led by the Spring Breeze Culture and Arts Foundation, the Tyzen Hsiao Foundation and the Friends of Lee Teng-hui Association, and was joined by delegates from the Taiwan Statebuilding Party and the Taiwan Solidarity
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
The Taipei District Court today ruled to extend the incommunicado detention of former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇) for two more months as part of an ongoing corruption trial. Codefendants in the case — real-estate tycoon Sheen Ching-jing (沈慶京) and Ko's former mayoral office head Lee Wen-tsung (李文宗) — were granted bail of NT$100 million (US$3.4 million) and NT$20 million respectively. Sheen and Lee would also be barred from leaving the country for eight months and prohibited from contact with, harassing, threatening or inquiring after the case with codefendants or witnesses. The two would also be