Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) on Thursday began a two-day trip to the US to give voice to KMT policies and prevent the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) from becoming the only “voice of Taiwan” in the US, his office said in a statement yesterday.
Chu, a former New Taipei City mayor, met with American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) officials at his hotel in Washington for a breakfast meeting, the office said.
He later held closed-door talks with former AIT director Douglas Paal at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former AIT chairman Richard Bush at the Brookings Institution, it said.
Chu visited the White House and spoke with members of the US National Security Council on Thursday afternoon before visiting the Project 2049 Institute and others, it added.
“Taiwan-US relations are our most important foreign relations,” the statement quoted Chu as saying.
“The KMT has always been friendly with the US, whether in the past or going forward,” Chu said, adding that the KMT has never wavered in its support for freedom and democracy and called on US friends to continue to support and recognize the KMT.
Chu also thanked the US government and private sector for their long-term friendship with Taiwan, the statement said.
He declined to comment when asked if he carried any message for the US on behalf of KMT presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜).
Many are glad to hear the KMT speak and understand the party’s stance on issues, as well as getting to know Han, Chu said.
For years, the KMT has lacked a representative to convey the party’s stance to the US, Chu said, adding that he was certain that his visit would help close the gap between the KMT and the US government and think tanks.
Taiwan and the US should establish substantive diplomatic relations and ministerial-level officials should be able to visit each other on official business, he said.
Asked whether he spoke with US officials about the unrest in Hong Kong, Chu said everyone is duly concerned about Hong Kong and Taiwan has firmly expressed its support for continued democracy and freedom, as well as upholding human rights in the territory.
It is everyone’s hope that the situation in Hong Kong will stabilize soon, he added.
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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