Purchasing arms is not the policy the public expects of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on the eve of the anniversary of her inauguration, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said yesterday.
Tsai in a Reuters interview on Thursday said that her administration does not “rule out any items that would be meaningful to our defense and our defense strategy, and the F-35 is one such item,”
Tsai also said she does not “exclude the opportunity to call [US] President [Donald] Trump himself, but it depends on the needs of the situation and the US government’s consideration of regional affairs.”
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Tang Te-ming (唐德明) said Tsai’s remarks indicated that she is “still anticipating friendly moves on the US’ part and hoping that Washington could be leaning toward [Taiwan] when it comes to cross-strait affairs.”
She is hoping for another telephone call with Trump to improve her dismal approval ratings, as the telephone call in December last year helped her garner some popular support, Tang said.
“An arms purchase then is the perfect pretext for another Tsai-Trump call,” he said, adding that the price of the arms would be up to Washington when Taipei is on the receiving end of a political favor.
The KMT has to shoulder its responsibility as the main opposition party to call on Tsai to take into account the nation’s economic situation, “which leaves no room for it to be a spendthrift,” Tang said.
“Does Taiwan really need F-35s that cost more than US$100 million each and come with extremely high maintenance fees?” Tang asked.
He quoted Tsai as saying before the presidential election that a strategic national security plan has to be put in place before any arms purchases and asked whether this plan has been implemented with the support of both the ruling and opposition parties.
“Taiwanese would not want to see another burden on the nation’s economy just because [Tsai] wishes to suck up to the US and make a telephone call to Trump,” he said.
After Tsai urged China to show flexibility and a broader mindset, and to view cross-strait relations with a different perspective, Tang said the president, “probably due to her utter deSinicization,” forgot an old Chinese proverb that large states should treat small states with benevolence, while small states should face larger states with wisdom.
“Does the president not get which side — large or small — should be the one to show flexibility and deal with the relationship with more wisdom?” Tang asked.
“It is impossible [for Tsai] to make improvements to cross-strait relations if she will not face up to the key to the problem,” he said.
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