The annual Taiwan-US-Japan trilateral security dialogue is to open in Taipei today, bringing together former US White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and lawmakers from the three nations.
The dialogue is jointly organized by Taiwan’s Prospect Foundation, the US’ Heritage Foundation and Japan’s Sasakawa Peace Foundation at the behest of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and is to be held at the Grand Hyatt Taipei, the ministry said in a press release yesterday.
As per customary practices, the event will feature a one-hour trilateral parliamentary dialogue among incumbent and former Taiwanese, US and Japanese lawmakers, the ministry said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) are to represent Taiwan.
The US side is represented by former Republican representative Tom Petri, while Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers Keisuke Suzuki and Rui Matsukawa would represent Japan, the ministry said.
Other highlights of the event will include a luncheon keynote speech by Priebus, which would not be open to the public and attendance would be by invitation only, and an opening address by Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), the ministry said.
Priebus, who assumed the role as chief of staff to US President Donald Trump in January before being replaced by then-US secretary of homeland security John Kelly in July, is considered well-versed in Taiwan-US affairs.
In his capacity as chairman of the Republican National Committee, Priebus led delegations to Taiwan twice, in 2011 and 2015. The main purpose of Priebus’ visits were to attend the nation’s Double Ten National Day celebrations.
The ministry said this year’s event will revolve around two topics: common strategic interests in the Asia-Pacific region from the aspects of changing security dynamics and the strategic value of Taiwan, and unconventional security cooperation in the areas of cybersecurity, as well as humanitarian aid and disaster relief.
“We are hoping that through this dialogue between Taiwanese, US and Japanese lawmakers, and the exchange of opinions among academics, we could get a better grasp of the mainstream thinking in regional and international contexts and use it as a reference for the government’s future policymaking,” the ministry 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:
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