US President Donald Trump’s unpredictability makes him “kind of afraid” of what might happen if Trump’s reported meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) next month in the US occurs, former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) director William Stanton said yesterday.
Stanton, who led the AIT’s Taipei office from 2009 to 2012 during then-US president Barack Obama’s presidency, spoke to reporters in Mandarin on the sidelines of a forum in Taipei about Taiwan’s strategic planning during Trump’s term in office.
The forum was hosted by the Taiwan Forever Association and the International Committee for a Democratic Taiwan, and Stanton was one of the panelists.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
While it is hard to predict what Trump and Xi would talk about when they meet, many political analysts have noticed the new US president’s inclination to pay little attention to policy issues during his meetings with foreign heads of state, Stanton said.
“From what I heard, during Trump’s meeting [last month] with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the US side did not even have someone there to take minutes and it had to use those kept by the Japanese afterwards,” Stanton said.
“That is why I am kind of afraid about his meeting with the Chinese leader, because I do not know if he is ready,” Stanton added.
Asked whether the Trump-Xi meeting would bode ill for Taiwan, Stanton said he was unsure, but added that he believed the biggest problem would be Trump’s tendency to flip-flop on issues and make conflicting statements.
He added that as Trump is more business-centric, Taiwan might not appear as valuable to him as in the eyes of Obama, who valued Taipei’s democratic achievements.
Turning to cross-strait issues, Stanton said he is of the opinion that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has made a serious effort to maintain the “status quo” and ensure peace across the Taiwan Strait.
“However, it seems that the Chinese government is still not satisfied and insists on the so-called ‘1992 consensus,’” Stanton said, urging Beijing to respect the opinions of the Taiwanese, the majority of whom disagree with China’s viewpoints.
The “1992 consensus” refers to a tacit understanding between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party that both sides acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
In 2006, former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) admitted making up the term in 2000, before the KMT handed power to the Democratic Progressive Party.
Tsai’s refusal to acknowledge the “1992 consensus” has resulted in several punitive measures by Beijing.
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