A concurrent resolution reaffirming the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and the “six assurances” as cornerstones of US-Taiwan relations was on Thursday introduced to the US Senate on the eve of president-elect Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) inauguration yesterday.
The resolution was passed by the US House of Representatives earlier this week.
Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez — senior members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee — introduced the resolution cosponsored by senators Jim Inhofe, Sherrod Brown and Cory Gardner.
Menendez said the resolution reaffirmed the importance of strong bilateral relations with Taiwan and underscored the US Senate’s unwavering support for the TRA.
“As historic progress continues to be made to improve Taiwan-China relations, we must ensure that Taiwan remains both a close friend to the US and a beacon of democracy and freedom in the Asia-Pacific region,” Menendez said.
“The relationship between the US and Taiwan grows stronger and stronger as each year passes,” Rubio said. “We have stood with Taiwan in the face of tyranny and watched as its people overcame fear to live in peace.”
“The ‘six assurances’ that [former US] president Ronald Reagan put in place more than 34 years ago are as valid today as they were in 1982,” he said.
Rubio said the resolution was especially timely, because it came as Taiwan was celebrating the inauguration of Tsai.
“Another peaceful transfer of power in Taiwan is just the latest symbol of what an open, vibrant society Taiwan has become,” he said.
Rubio, a former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said he looked forward to working with Tsai “to deepen the relationship between Taiwan and the US and take it to new levels.”
“We must be watchful in the coming weeks and months for any attempts by Beijing to subvert Taiwan’s triumph of democracy to advance its own agenda,” he said.
“That is why it is important that we speak with one voice as a Congress to reaffirm the importance of the ‘six assurances’ to our relationship for the years to come,” Rubio 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