Taiwan is expected to face heavier economic pressure from the US over access to its markets, but should also work toward playing a more significant role in the US’ grand Asia-Pacific strategy, analysts said yesterday during an examination of projected Taiwan-US relations under US President Barack Obama’s second term.
The challenge for Taiwan in its relations with the US following Obama’s re-election will be two-fold — economic and political — and the economic issue appears to be more urgent, academics told the forum, which was organized by Taiwan Thinktank.
Because the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — a comprehensive, high-standard free-trade agreement — is expected to be the US’ main economic focus in the Asia-Pacific region, Taiwan — which has expressed its strong desire to be part of the pact — should brace for difficult challenges ahead, said David Huang (黃偉峰), a researcher at Academia Sinica who served as Taiwan’s deputy representative to the US.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Describing the US’ economic policy as “economic patriotism,” Huang said that while that is not exactly protectionist, the US would be almost certain to ask its trade partners to create a positive environment for US businesses.
The US could demand that Taiwan further open its markets to certain products to show its determination to liberalize trade before proceeding with TPP talks, as well as the resumption of Trade and Investment Framework Agreement talks, Huang said.
On the political front, Huang said President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) intended to adopt a strategy of “equidistant diplomacy” in his dealings with Taiwan, China and the US, but it “was easier said than done.”
Ma’s biggest mistake in handling the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) dispute was to drag Beijing into the equation as an effective claimant and to force the US — which is obligated to side with Japan due to their bilateral security pact — to question Taiwan’s motives in the dispute.
The Obama administration is likely to apply less pressure on Taiwan to strengthen its national defense capabilities over the next four years, but it expects Taiwan to keep it informed — or hold prior consultations — on issues related to the cross-strait peace treaty, as well as affairs connected to the East China Sea and the South China Sea, said Lin Cheng-yi (林正義), a researcher at the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica.
Panelists at the forum agreed that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could play an influential role in Taiwan-US relations as well, despite it not being the governing party.
The DPP has to realize that it will face three “competitors” — the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Beijing and Washington — in future elections, in particular after obvious US interference in January’s presidential election, Lin said.
That was why the opposition party should try to make the US a neutral party in future elections and, at the same time, monitor the Ma administration by making it work harder to assess the change in Taiwan’s external security environment in the Asia-Pacific region and to reassure the US that Taiwan is an “economic and security partner” as US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described it last year.
Huang said the DPP — as a party which claims to have always sided with the people — could try and stay one step ahead of the KMT by pushing a set of economic policies framed as part of a “compassionate liberalization” in which substantial measures for industrial upgrading and the mitigation of potential impact on local businesses would be addressed following any future free-trade agreements.
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
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
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