The US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Wednesday approved the proposed Taiwan policy act (TPA) with a 17-5 bipartisan vote, after some of the bill’s more controversial proposals were removed.
US Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who was the bill’s initiator, said the removed proposals were only “minor” compared with the bill’s core defense proposals, which authorize US$6.5 billion in grants to Taiwan for arms purchases over a five-year period.
Arms sales provisions are crucial to Taiwan’s defense, but the removed proposals should not be shrugged off. Had the bill remained intact, it would have added formality to the Taiwan-US relationship. Taiwan’s representative office in the US would have been renamed to something more meaningful, and Taiwan would have been officially recognized as a “major non-NATO ally” of the US, which it undoubtedly is. Those provisions were removed so as not to upset Beijing, but it is precisely because Beijing protested against the TPA that the bill should be passed in its original, unaltered state.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Wednesday said the TPA violated the “one China” policy and the US’ other agreements with China such as the Three Joint Communiques.
It is ironic that China claims the US broke its agreements with Beijing after China broke its agreement with the UK over Hong Kong.
However, it is crucial to send a clear message to China that it cannot dictate the laws of the US or the actions of its officials.
Director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund Bonnie Glaser wrote on Twitter that the TPA had to be altered to prevent Beijing from complaining that the US was “diluting” its agreements with China regarding Taiwan.
In response, political commentator Michael Turton wrote, “If the US did nothing, Beijing would still make the same claims. The purpose of Beijing’s noises is to gain it victories like this. Congrats, you’ve handed Beijing a victory that cost it nothing.”
That is why US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to persist with her visit to Taiwan last month after China threatened to take action if the trip went ahead. While smaller European countries such as Lithuania and the Czech Republic are defying China at the risk of economic sanctions and political coercion, what sort of message does it send if the US backs down in the face of Chinese threats?
The US should abandon the “one China” policy and work toward the establishment of formal ties with Taipei. When Washington established ties with China under former US president Richard Nixon, perhaps it was aiming to contain the Soviet Union. Perhaps it considered that China as a rival would be an economic threat, whereas China as a friend might eventually democratize following economic growth under capitalism. Whatever the mindset of Nixon and his administration, Russia and China are now antagonistic and threatening. There is no benefit to the US in continuing to adhere to the “one China” policy and there is no reason to dilute Taiwan-US relations to appease Beijing.
China would never dilute its own legislation or modify its behavior to appease the US or other countries. China passed a law in January last year that would authorize its navy to fire at other countries’ vessels in internationally contested waters. China ignored international protests over the law.
Last month, China released a white paper on Taiwan in which it said it “will not renounce the use of force” to achieve unification. China again ignored international protests. Appeasing China does not deter its aggressive and coercive behavior. It does not prevent China from moving forward with its ambitions over Taiwan. The Taiwanese government should clearly convey to Washington that unambiguous support for Taiwan and the establishment of formal relations are the only way forward.
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
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