If Taiwan needs a sign that the relationship with the US is “at a high water mark,” it only needs to look at the schedule of newly appointed American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Sandra Oudkirk for the past four months.
After assuming the post at the end of July, Oudkirk met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Aug. 10, when Oudkirk said that “the Taiwan-US relationship is at a high water mark.”
Since then, Oudkirk has kept a packed agenda. From appearing at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport when Moderna COVID-19 vaccines donated by the US arrived, to traveling to Chiayi County to witness the upgrading of F-16 combat squadrons, to accompanying US congressional delegations to meetings with Tsai and visiting Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) facilities, there is no question that Oudkirk has been demonstrating the high water mark occasion with tangible actions.
The Global Cooperation and Training Framework (GCTF) is another example.
To resolve the predicaments Taiwan faces in joining international organizations, the US founded the GCTF in 2015, a tailor-made platform to utilize Taiwan’s strengths and expertise to address global issues of mutual concern with the international community, focusing on public health, crime, digital economics, cybersecurity and other fields.
Since assuming her position, Oudkirk has hosted six consecutive workshops with one to two events per month. The topics have included green energy and sustainability, labor rights protection, crisis management and disaster response, women in government, protecting the rights of people with disabilities and countering fake news.
All of these issues are within Taiwan’s areas of expertise, and by standing shoulder to shoulder with the US, the nation can bring to life its slogan of “Taiwan can help” and contribute in a variety of ways to the international community.
Japan became the GCTF’s third partner in 2019, and has since joined Taiwan and the US in cohosting all of its workshops.
Australia also joined the framework in October.
The GCTF alliance can assist Taiwan in becoming central to those countries’ strategies in the Indo-Pacific region.
Additional like-minded countries such as Canada, the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Israel and some countries in the EU have joined the GCTF to cohost workshops on a wide range of topics.
Taiwan might be seeing a spillover effect from the GCTF, with a growing number of participating countries and increasing diversity in the topics it covers.
Since the administration of US President Joe Biden took office in January, US Navy vessels have sailed through the Taiwan Strait 11 times, conducting regular freedom of navigation patrols every month. Tsai has also confirmed the presence of US troops in the nation to help train the Taiwanese military.
Meanwhile, a TSMC 5-nanometer wafer plant under construction in Phoenix, Arizona, is to be the US’ largest direct foreign investment in the country’s history.
With defense and supply chain cooperation in place, there is no doubt that the relationship between Taiwan and the US is at a high water mark.
As visits from US government officials and congressional delegations are expected to increase, Oudkirk’s schedule is likely to become busier than ever.
Chen Yung-chang is a company manager.
Translated by Rita Wang
We are used to hearing that whenever something happens, it means Taiwan is about to fall to China. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) cannot change the color of his socks without China experts claiming it means an invasion is imminent. So, it is no surprise that what happened in Venezuela over the weekend triggered the knee-jerk reaction of saying that Taiwan is next. That is not an opinion on whether US President Donald Trump was right to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro the way he did or if it is good for Venezuela and the world. There are other, more qualified
This should be the year in which the democracies, especially those in East Asia, lose their fear of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China principle” plus its nuclear “Cognitive Warfare” coercion strategies, all designed to achieve hegemony without fighting. For 2025, stoking regional and global fear was a major goal for the CCP and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), following on Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Little Red Book admonition, “We must be ruthless to our enemies; we must overpower and annihilate them.” But on Dec. 17, 2025, the Trump Administration demonstrated direct defiance of CCP terror with its record US$11.1 billion arms
The immediate response in Taiwan to the extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by the US over the weekend was to say that it was an example of violence by a major power against a smaller nation and that, as such, it gave Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) carte blanche to invade Taiwan. That assessment is vastly oversimplistic and, on more sober reflection, likely incorrect. Generally speaking, there are three basic interpretations from commentators in Taiwan. The first is that the US is no longer interested in what is happening beyond its own backyard, and no longer preoccupied with regions in other
As technological change sweeps across the world, the focus of education has undergone an inevitable shift toward artificial intelligence (AI) and digital learning. However, the HundrED Global Collection 2026 report has a message that Taiwanese society and education policymakers would do well to reflect on. In the age of AI, the scarcest resource in education is not advanced computing power, but people; and the most urgent global educational crisis is not technological backwardness, but teacher well-being and retention. Covering 52 countries, the report from HundrED, a Finnish nonprofit that reviews and compiles innovative solutions in education from around the world, highlights a
RSS