Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) endorsed Japan’s move to affirm its right to “collective self-defense,” saying it will strengthen the US-Japan strategic alliance and help stabilize the region.
The new rule was passed by the Cabinet led by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday and approves a reinterpretation of Article 9 in the constitution that allows the nation’s military to come to the aid of allies if they come under attack, even if Japan itself is not facing a foreign threat of force.
“The right to ‘collective self-defense’ is important to Japan and the US. Although the US has a powerful military, the nation is facing economic difficulty. Now that Japan is willing to exercise that right, the US will be more assured. It will also strengthen the US-Japan strategic alliance,” Lee said.
The former president said follow-up developments would see countries like the Philippines, Australia and India having closer military ties with Japan, and that Taiwan is to be affected as well.
Lee said the changed environment would lead to more restrained behavior by China, which behaves aggressively toward weaker nations amid its economic growth, such as by always bringing up [its claims on] the Diaoyutai Islands [釣魚台, or Senkaku Islands in Japan] and maritime disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines.
“After Japan’s approving the exercise of its right to collective self-defense, China will become less likely to make aggressive moves, so the entire Asian region will have more stability,” Lee said after attending a youth leadership training workshop.
“Japan should take this opportunity to amend Article 9 in its constitution. I also hope to see Japan make serious efforts to draft its own ‘Taiwan Relations Act,’ so Taiwan can have more stability,” he 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
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