The challenge ahead for the US in dealing with China at a time of serious global issues is to project its fundamental values, a visiting US politician said yesterday in Taipei, as he emphasized that these values have long been shared by Taiwan.
Former US ambassador to Beijing Jon Huntsman delivered a speech titled America 2012: Challenges and Opportunities at a forum hosted by Taipei Forum, a think thank established by former National Security Council secretary-general Su Chi (蘇起).
China, where Huntsman served from 2009 until last year, before he returned to the US to participate in the Republican presidential primary, was one of the four things he thought would drive the world in the future, along with the US, the energy issue and the EU.
Photo: CNA
As China is set to convene its 18th Party Congress and a fifth generation of leaders, widely presumed to be led by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平), is to take the helm, Huntsman said that the legacy of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) is coming to an end.
Huntsman said that Deng left three legacies for China: a diplomatic opening to the rest of the world, an economic opening and ensuing liberalization, and the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party as the focus of decisionmaking.
The new Chinese leaders of the fifth generation would be a “tough generation to negotiate with,” Huntsman said, adding that they think China has arisen and that the US is maybe experiencing a moment of difficulty.
Huntsman said the US has “three deficits: a fiscal deficit, a trust deficit, and a confidence deficit,” but that the US “has the ability to repair our faults.”
The US debt problem seems more “a national security issue” than merely an economic issue, public support for Congress is at an all-time low, and Americans have lost confidence, “yet when you look at what the US has as assets on the balance sheet, it’s still a strong nation,” Huntsman said.
With so many global challenges ahead, the relationship between the US and China has gone from a bilateral relationship to a global relationship, but they are “still walking through the difficulty of forging a global relationship,” he said.
Huntsman said that US-China relations are an opportunity for the US to “project values.”
“The US should be unafraid to articulate our values of liberty, democracy, human rights and the free market,” Huntsman said. The values remain the same no matter whether the economy goes up or down or which administration is in the White House, he said.
On the issue of the human rights situation in China, Huntsman said that the US should of course take up the issue with Beijing, as he said that “we always get stronger when we do and always regret it at some point in the future when we don’t.”
Huntsman, who spent several years living in Taiwan — he first came to Taiwan in 1979 and returned in 1987 — said that the US and Taiwan “share too much in common” in terms of values and their views of security and stability.
The “strengths” that Taiwan has are its people and its commitments to values, he said.
“Everywhere I go, I am very impressed by the power and strengths of people living in a free society. It’s only up to your imagination and creativity about where you go,” he said.
Huntsman said the commitment to values that Taiwan has is also what is important about the US, over and above its military and economic power.
“When you can combine the energy and intelligence of the population with values, nothing can stop you,” he said.
In response to media inquiries regarding the possibility of the US abandoning Taiwan, Huntsman said that he had heard such talk, but it was very weakly supported.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,