Taiwan will not align itself with China on issues related to territorial disputes under President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, a Taiwanese visiting scholar at the Brookings Institute in Washington said on Wednesday.
Huang Kwei-bo (黃奎博), an associate professor at National Chengchi University’s department of diplomacy, quoted Ma as saying that Taiwan “supports all actions benefiting regional stability and peace in the Asia-Pacific region and will not discuss issues related to territorial disputes in Asia with China.”
He also cited Ma as saying: “Taiwan is willing to cooperate with countries on mutual development and exploration of oceanic resources.”
Huang made the statements at the Hudson Center while addressing a seminar that posed the question: “Will Taiwan be secure in the emerging Asian order?”
Even though Taiwan presently has closer links with China, the nation still needs the support of the international community, he said.
The US should help Taiwan defend itself and should be supportive of direct talks between Taipei and Beijing, he added.
In response to Washington’s concern that Taiwan invests too little in military defense, which accounts for less than 3 percent of its GDP on average, Huang said allocating a lower military budget is reasonable under the current economic downturn.
“If Taiwan fully accepts the US$12 billion arms sales proposed by the US, it will not be able to pay its soldiers,” he said.
The nation’s military expenditure would likely increase when the economic situation improves, Huang added.
He also said that many in Washington view Taiwan’s improving relations with China in an unfavorable light.
Some claim that Taiwan’s frequent contacts with China would undermine US-Taiwan relations and that Taiwan would become a weak link in the US’ strategic positioning in East Asia, while others argue that Taiwan has become a liability to the US and that “abandoning Taiwan” is a favorable option, he said.
Huang called these misconceptions of the situation “diplomatic realism.”
If the US truly abandons Taiwan, it would mean that the US has admitted defeat to China and would lose its competitive edge in the Asia-Pacific region, he said.
US arms sales to Taiwan help stabilize the situation across the Taiwan Strait and help the nation have more confidence in negotiating with China, Huang said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater