A new report on US-China relations in an election year concludes that US President Barack Obama has been a “solid friend of Taiwan.”
Despite the White House’s failure to sell desperately needed F-16C/D aircraft to Taiwan or help with the acquisition of submarines, the report said that Obama has provided “unprecedentedly large packages of arms sales.”
Prepared by the Washington-based think tank Center for American Progress, the 35-page report accuses opposition Republican US presidential candidates of “reflexive belligerence toward China.”
It also said the Republican strategies aimed at short-term political point-scoring — calculated efforts to create a new Cold War enemy — and “will undermine global security.”
The report was released on Tuesday as the New York Times ran a front-page story saying that despite improving job growth and a divisive Republican primary battle, Obama was heading into the US presidential election “on treacherous political ground.”
A new poll by the newspaper showed that Obama’s approval rating had dropped substantially in recent weeks with a majority now disapproving of the job he is doing.
While campaign positions traditionally soften after the election, it is notable that the president’s most likely Republican opponent, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, has taken a markedly harder line on China policy.
Many analysts believe that if elected, Romney might well sell F-16C/Ds to Taiwan.
The new report, written by policy analyst Jacob Stokes and Nina Hachigian, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, insists that US conservatives -continue to falsely accuse the Obama administration of “abandoning” Taiwan.
It quotes Jeffrey Bader of the Brookings Institution as suggesting that such attacks are “partisan rather than security-based.”
The report concluded: “The Obama administration has also committed to support Taiwan in ways it calculates will not destabilize the situation across the Strait, including upping the level of visits by Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officials to Taipei.”
US Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Poneman became the highest-ranking US government official to visit the country in more than a decade when he landed in Taiwan in December last year.
The report said that Chinese military modernization was a “cause for concern,” but said the two new weapons systems unveiled by Beijing over the past year were more “symbolic advances than true technical challenges to US supremacy.”
It said analysts agree that China’s first aircraft carrier is a relative “piece of junk” and that the Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter is “based on relatively old designs and relies on Russian jet-engine technology.”
“The challenge for the United States is to press China to make responsible choices that contribute to stability, prosperity, peace and human rights,’ the report said.
“This means the way forward for the United States is to combine strong and forward-looking bonds with our Asian allies old and new with a strong relationship with China,” it added.
“The US should welcome China’s rise, while at the same time insisting that China adhere to internationally accepted rules and norms of behavior at home and abroad,” the report said.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai