Former US secretary of defense William Perry yesterday urged the Taiwanese government to “play it cool” ahead of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) planned live-fire drill in the Taiwan Strait next week.
“My advice will be as long as the Chinese do not violate your boundary and sovereignty, play it cool. Don’t read something into [what] might or might not be there,” Perry told media in Taipei.
“They called it a drill, accept it as a drill,” he said, referring to the PLA’s scheduled exercise that is scheduled to take place from 8am to midnight on Wednesday next week in a zone 20km from the coast of Quanzhou Bay in Fujian Province.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Perry, who served as US secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997 under then-US president Bill Clinton, was on a whirlwind 24-hour visit to Taiwan to promote the Mandarin version of his book, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink.
During the 1996 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, Perry urged Clinton to dispatch two aircraft carriers to patrol waters close to the Strait.
Perry said the US chose to act strongly in 1996 was because “it was obviously more than a drill,” but rather an attempt at coercion by Beijing, which therefore justified Washington’s strong response.
“So my advice is don’t read something into a military drill and don’t interpret it,” he said.
The 90-year-old said he has more confidence in the security and safety of Taiwan today than he did in 1996, given that a lot has changed across the Taiwan Strait over the past two decades.
“Maybe most dramatically is the free travel between China and Taiwan. And also, the very robust commercial air traffic and the very robust economic interchange,” he said, adding that he did not see any basis for believing that Beijing is trying to stimulate military action against Taipei.
Asked whether Taiwan should seek to purchase Lockheed Martin F-35 jets from the US, Perry said he would not recommend such an acquisition, as it would be more effective for Taiwan to improve its air capability by spending resources on pilot training and air-to-air missiles than buying the latest aircraft.
“It [purchasing F-35 jets] is probably not necessary. The previous generation of fighter planes, some of which Taiwan already has, are very, very good,” Perry said, adding that the F-35 is also “very expensive.”
Turning to the US’ recently promulgated Taiwan Travel Act, which encourages high-level visits by US and Taiwanese officials, Perry said he holds a positive view of the new legislation.
“My own experience when I was in government is that the more visits, more dialogues and more discussions, the better,” he said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS