China has effectively “lost Taiwan,” a researcher told a conference in Washington on Wednesday.
“Willing, peaceful, unification is out of the question — certainly in the near term and most likely in the medium term as well,” said Michael Mazza, a research fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
He said there was little interest in Taiwan for a “one country two-systems” arrangement and that for the young Taiwanese the idea that China and Taiwan were part of “one China” was “increasingly an anachronism.”
Addressing a Heritage Foundation conference on “Taiwan in international organizations” Mazza said that the more Taiwan regularly interacts with other countries the more other countries are likely to care about Taiwan’s fate.
“The more that others care about Taiwan the more they will reject the Chinese position that Taiwan affairs are internal affairs,” he said.
Mazza said that a wave of international opinion would not change Beijing’s approach to Taiwan, but combined with Taiwan’s defense capability, the US deterrent, and Taiwan’s deep economic ties to the rest of the world, China might find its options “somewhat more constrained.”
Former managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan Barbara Schrage said it was too early to predict how Beijing would react to Taiwan’s efforts to maintain and increase its international space following the victory of the Democratic Progressive Party in this year’s elections.
“I am cautiously optimistic that Taiwan will be able to maintain its current international space so long as it does nothing to openly challenge the PRC [People’s Republic of China] on this issue. Expanding its international space is likely to be much more difficult, but it is certainly within the realms of possibility,” she said.
Schrage urged Taiwan to seek the support of other countries for its participation in international organizations and clearly demonstrate that it is a responsible member of the international community.
She said that Taiwan should avoid strictly political objectives such as controversial battles for full membership of the UN and its affiliated organizations, adding such contests “aggravate Beijing and stand no chance of success.”
She said the US should develop strategies and tactics to assist Taiwan to achieve its priorities including the development of flexible and imaginative approaches.
“The administration should quietly but actively engage like-minded countries to support initiatives and tactics aimed at achieving broader participation in the international community,” Schrage said.
Center for Strategic and International Studies China Power Project director Bonnie Glaser said the international community was frequently deprived of Taiwan’s “vast experience and knowledge” on a range of issues.
“By not including Taiwan in international regimes particularly those that govern issues like civil aviation safety, nuclear security, non-proliferation and police cooperation, the world is left with a missing link in what would otherwise be an integrated fight,” she said.
Glaser said that on virtually a weekly basis there was an incident in which Taiwanese were blocked from joining a meeting somewhere in the world.
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