The core objective of the US partnership with Taiwan is to ensure that the island is “strong and confident, and free from coercion and threat,” a senior Pentagon official reportedly told the US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference.
Only when it acts from a position of strength can Taipei engage in productive dialogue with Beijing to equitably and peacefully merge differences, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy Daniel Chiu said.
The conference was closed to the press and the Pentagon refused to provide a copy of Chiu’s remarks, but several different sources provided the Taipei Times with an outline of the keynote speech delivered on Monday. Overall, those attending the conference were reassured by Chiu’s words, which followed widespread discussion that the US had been neglecting Taiwan.
Chui said that the US’ obligation to Taiwan did not begin and end with arms sales. Washington’s overall defense cooperation was broader and more consequential than any single dimension of it, he said, adding that Taiwan needed to focus its planning and procurement efforts on a nontraditional, innovative and asymmetric approach.
Defense reforms to date were important and necessary, but were not sufficient, Chiu said.
The preservation of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is fundamental to broader US strategic interests, chief among them the promotion of peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region, Chiu said.
As part of a broad defense and security system agenda, the US constantly engages with Taiwan in evaluating, assessing and reviewing its defense needs. The US supported Taiwan’s military modernization efforts.
Security is a necessary precondition to peace and prosperity, and it is crucial that Taiwan’s defense force had the capability to defend the nation, he said.
It is important for Taiwan to have the military personnel, equipment and training that would make an aggressor pause before using threat or force for the purpose of coercion or aggression, he 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:
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