Two members of US Congress — Republican Representative Michael McCaul from Texas and Democratic Representative Shelley Berkley from Nevada — are commemorating the 30th anniversary of former US president Ronald Reagan’s “six assurances” and the 25th anniversary of the lifting of martial law in Taiwan by entering special statements in the US Congressional Record.
Both representatives said they were acting “to further underline our unwavering commitment and affirm our support for the strong and deepening relationship between the US and Taiwan.”
Reagan issued the “six assurances” on July 14, 1982, to reaffirm US policy toward Taiwan and stipulate that the US would not pressure Taiwan to negotiate with China. On the same date, five years later, then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) lifted martial law in Taiwan. It had been in place for 38 years — the longest period of rule by martial law of any regime in the world.
“The coincidence in dates of these two critical junctures in Taiwan’s history, five years apart, highlights the indispensable role that the US and the Taiwan Relations Act each played in the island’s democratization,” Formosa Association for Public Affairs president Mark Kao (高龍榮) said.
“Beijing does not believe in the legitimacy of either the ‘six assurances’ or the Taiwan Relations Act because both documents fly in the face of its aspiration to annex Taiwan by force,” Kao said.
McCaul and Berkley said in their Congressional statements: “The people of Taiwan continue to live day after day under the ominous shadow cast by over 1,400 short and medium-range ballistic missiles that China has aimed at them.”
“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] persists in claiming Taiwan as a ‘renegade province’ refusing to renounce the use of force to prevent Taiwan’s formal de jure independence,” they added.
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:
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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