The telephone call between President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and US president-elect Donald Trump is the greatest diplomatic surprise in US-China diplomacy since 1979, an op-ed in the Sankei Shimbun said yesterday.
Japanese columnist Kunihiko Miyake wrote that the phone call was not happenstance, but the result of long-term, careful planning.
Citing the Shanghai Communique, Miyake said: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China,” which was not an agreement or recognition.
The phone call therefore is in no way a violation of the communique, Miyake said.
The Japan-China joint communique in 1969 similarly dodged open recognition of Beijing’s claims by stating: “The Government of Japan fully understands and respects this stand [sic] of the Government of the People’s Republic of China, and it firmly maintains its stand [sic] under Article 8 of the Potsdam Proclamation,” Miyake wrote.
The phone call would have a beneficial effect on the US-Japan alliance, he added.
Then-Japanese prime minister Eisaku Sato had, in the joint statement made with then-US president Richard Nixon in 1969, stressed that “the maintenance of peace and security in the Taiwan area was also a most important factor for the security of Japan.”
The telephone call between the US and Taiwan had “real meaning” and the US reinforcing US-Taiwan relations is “very welcome,” Miyake said.
However, he added that countries in the region hope Beijing does not read the wrong message into the call and jump to the wrong conclusions, which could escalate regional tensions.
Despite Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) saying that the call was a “small trick by Taiwan,” it was evident from Wang’s facial expression that he was angry and worried, Miyake said.
Miyake, a representative for Japan’s Foreign Policy Research Institute, was a former Japanese diplomat who was stationed in Washington, Beijing and Iraq.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS