US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Saturday last week expressed their opposition to any unilateral attempts to change the “status quo” in the East and South China seas by force or threat, and reiterated the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
The special mention of Taiwan at their meeting in Washington is globally significant for at least two reasons.
The first is their reinterpretation and expansion of the US-Japan Security Treaty.
When the Japanese government in 1999 proposed new guidelines for US-Japan defense cooperation to the Japanese parliament, it amended the definition of the “situations in areas surrounding Japan” with an important influence on its peace and security, emphasizing that “area” is not merely a geographical term, but describes the nature of a situation.
It also gave six examples: imminent armed conflict in its vicinity; ongoing armed conflict; past armed conflict after which order has not yet been restored and maintained; insurrection or civil war affecting Japan’s security; a likely influx of refugees due to political turmoil elsewhere; and acts defined by the UN Security Council as aggressions.
Whether cross-strait issues are “situations in areas surrounding Japan” in terms of the US-Japan alliance has since caused international attention and concern.
Following the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee in March, the talks in Washington once again stressed the importance of peace and stability across the Strait, while revising and more clearly defining the concept of “situations in areas surrounding Japan.”
Second, a quasi-military alliance between Taiwan, the US and Japan has emerged.
Washington has continuously played a key role in maintaining security in the Indo-Pacific region.
Despite there being no formal military partnership between the three countries, the growing Chinese threats against Taiwan’s aerial and maritime zones extend to threats to Japan’s national security.
If Washington were to take the initiative, it could push for the formation of a three-way quasi-military alliance, using existing exchange mechanisms such as the US-Japan Security Alliance and Taiwan-US military cooperation.
After then-US president Richard Nixon and then-Japanese prime minister Eisaku Sato in 1969 included Taiwan in a joint statement after a US-Japan summit, Taiwan being mentioned in Biden’s and Suga’s statement 52 years later is significant.
It is a declaration to the world that a strategic cooperation and quasi-military alliance between the three nations is taking shape, as they team up against the Chinese Communist Party’s military expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.
Yao Chung-yuan is a professor and former deputy director of the Ministry of National Defense’s strategic planning department.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Forward Forum in Taipei, former Singaporean minister for foreign affairs George Yeo (楊榮文) proposed a “Chinese commonwealth” as a potential framework for political integration between Taiwan and China. Yeo said the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait is unsustainable and that Taiwan should not be “a piece on the chessboard” in a geopolitical game between China and the US. Yeo’s remark is nothing but an ill-intentioned political maneuver that is made by all pro-China politicians in Singapore. Since when does a Southeast Asian nation have the right to stick its nose in where it is not wanted
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has released a plan to economically integrate China’s Fujian Province with Taiwan’s Kinmen County, outlining a cross-strait development project based on six major themes and 21 measures. This official document by the CCP is directed toward Taiwan’s three outlying island counties: Penghu County, Lienchiang County (Matsu) and Kinmen County. The plan sets out to construct a cohabiting sphere between Kinmen and the nearby Chinese city of Xiamen, as well as between Matsu and Fuzhou. It also aims to bring together Minnanese cultural areas including Taiwan’s Penghu and China’s cities of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou for further integrated
During a recent visit to Taiwan, I encountered repeated questions about “America skepticism” among the body politic. The basic premise of the “America skepticism” theory is that Taiwan people should view the United States as an unreliable, self-interested actor who is using Taiwan for its own purposes. According to this theory, America will abandon Taiwan when its interests are advanced by doing so. At one level, such skepticism is a sign of a healthy, well-functioning democratic society that protects the right for vigorous political debate. Indeed, around the world, the people of Taiwan are far from alone in debating America’s reliability
As China’s economy was meant to drive global economic growth this year, its dramatic slowdown is sounding alarm bells across the world, with economists and experts criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for his unwillingness or inability to respond to the nation’s myriad mounting crises. The Wall Street Journal reported that investors have been calling on Beijing to take bolder steps to boost output — especially by promoting consumer spending — but Xi has deep-rooted philosophical objections to Western-style consumption-driven growth, seeing it as wasteful and at odds with his goal of making China a world-leading industrial and technological powerhouse, and