Following El Salvador’s switch of diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, a former high-ranking US official on Wednesday urged Washington to expand its interactions with Taiwan to help protect the nation’s sovereignty and the livelihood of its people.
Former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, who is now chairman the Project 2049 Institute, made the call in a statement after El Salvador on Tuesday cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan and established formal relations with China.
It was the third such case this year and leaves Taiwan with only 17 diplomatic partners amid Beijing’s money offensive to lure away its allies.
“The US should consider expanding interactions with Taiwan within the framework of our existing US ‘one China’ policy, to support the values of a true, free and open Indo-Pacific region,” Armitage said.
For more than 60 years, the US has played an important role in ensuring Taiwan’s security, and “we remain committed to Taiwan, to its democracy, and to its 23 million citizens who deserve respect, dignity and a strong presence in the international community,” he said.
Reflecting its own “Cold War mentality,” the Chinese Communist Party’s intransigence in recognizing the political legitimacy of Taiwan remains one of the most significant obstacles to regional peace and stability, he said.
“It can be expected that the authorities in Beijing will increase reliance on coercive persuasion to accelerate its international isolation of Taiwan,” he said.
Like Japan, South Korea, Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam and other countries, Taiwan should be free from coercion and afforded its right to protect its sovereignty and the livelihood of its citizens, he said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift