The US has a strong security relationship with Taiwan and its recent legislation on military exchanges with Taiwan was not aimed at highlighting tensions across the Taiwan Strait, the US Department of State said earlier this week.
“Our policy with regard to Taiwan is exactly the same, hasn’t changed,” US Department of State deputy spokesman Mark Toner said at a daily press briefing on Tuesday. “We believe in a ‘one China’ policy. There’s been no change to that policy.”
In response to questions about the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 that US President Barack Obama signed into law on Friday last week amid strained cross-strait ties, Toner said that Washington was not seeking to highlight cross-strait tensions.
He also said the US has “a strong security relationship with Taiwan.”
The act included for the first time a section on exchanges of senior military personnel between Taiwan and the US.
The bill cleared the US Senate in a 92-7 vote on Dec. 8 after it was approved in the House of Representatives by a vote of 375-34 on Dec. 2.
Section 1284 of the act states that it is the “sense of Congress” that “the Secretary of Defense should carry out a program of exchanges of senior military officers and senior officials between the United States and Taiwan designed to improve military to military relations between the United States and Taiwan.”
It defines an exchange as “an activity, exercise, event, or observation opportunity between members of the [US] Armed Forces and officials of the Department of Defense, on the one hand, and armed forces personnel and officials of Taiwan, on the other hand.”
It remains to be seen whether or how the new US administration under Donald Trump will act on this section of the act after he formally takes office on Jan. 20.
Taiwan has said it welcomes the inclusion of military exchanges with Taiwan in the act and hopes for continued cooperation between the two sides.
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