Future US-Taiwan relations would be “conditioned in significant measure” by the way Taipei adopts constructive and effective approaches to cross-strait relations, a former senior US Department of State official said.
“Given the potential impact of developments in cross-strait ties on US national interests, no one should doubt that this is an issue to which Washington will attach great importance,” Stimson Center East Asia program director Alan Romberg said.
In a long academic paper published this week by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Romberg said that during her Washington visit earlier this month, Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) had avoided language that would “trigger rejection” from Beijing.
“Most observers believe that unless something catastrophic derails Tsai’s campaign, even strong PRC [People’s Republic of China] statements about the negative consequences of Tsai’s failure to embrace a ‘one China’ position may not be enough to upset what seems like an inevitable DPP victory,” Romberg said.
He said that unlike the impression many people had during the 2012 Taiwan presidential election, the US is taking a studiously neutral position on next year’s contest.
Romberg, who served 27 years in the State Department, said Washington would focus on the need for both China and Taiwan to adopt policies characterized by restraint and flexibility to carry on constructive cross-strait dialogue and maintain the “current low level of tension.”
“Those in the mainland who distrust Tsai Ing-wen and would have the US oppose the DPP or instruct the DPP what policies to adopt will be disappointed,” he said.
Romberg said that Beijing harbored “deep suspicions” about Tsai’s ambitions regarding Taiwan independence.
He said Beijing says that she will say one thing during the campaign and move in a different direction once elected.
“Given the nuances evident in Beijing’s statements, as well as the urgency and severity of the myriad of other challenges facing the PRC leadership, one should remain alert to the possibility that the Mainland might limit its reaction if Tsai continues to adopt positions that, while perhaps ambiguous, could be interpreted as not inconsistent with one China,” Romberg said.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: