The George W. Bush administration is "relieved" that President Chen Shui-bian (
But officials note that overall US-Taiwan relations extend far beyond the referendum issue, and describe the relationship as "very strong."
They also say that the referendum wording Chen unveiled last week appears to remove what Washington saw as the threat to the status quo in cross-strait relations contained in Chen's earlier referendum plan, which was aimed directly at China's missile buildup across the Strait.
Such a threat was Bush's main concern when he slammed Chen and his referendum plan after meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (
Nevertheless, while the administration will not oppose the new wording, it will not endorse it either, said one senior US official.
The US government's response to the new referendum wording, conveyed by US officials, seems to portray an administration still worried about Chen's aims and concerned that the referendum issue could still blow up into a problem for cross-strait issues and the US-China-Taiwan triangular equation.
What comes out of one interview the Taipei Times conducted with a senior official is a range of uncertainties that Chen has not answered, and deep questioning of Chen's leadership ability in calling for a public opinion poll on issues he, as president, should decide himself.
On the first question that the planned referendum proposes to ask whether Taiwan should spend more on arms in view of the missile threat, a US official noted Washington's efforts over recent years to convince Taiwan to spend more on defense and buy the weapons Bush promised in April 2001.
"We're willing to work with them on that," the official said.
"So this strikes me more as a question of leadership, then going to the public of Taiwan to ask for its opinion of this. This requires real leadership," he said.
"There's a threat there, and it requires expending resources and making decisions in Taiwan. That's what leaders need to do.
"We want to see more leadership out of Taiwan authorities on questions of defense, and turning it over to a question to the public I don't see as terribly helpful," he said.
He said the second referendum question on resuming cross-strait talks also is matter for the leaders to decide.
"We think both sides should take steps to resume a dialogue that has been stopped for years, or in the absence of a formal dialogue, finding ways to promote peace and stability between the two sides."
Saying that the administration still has not decided what to make of the new referendum formulation, the official said, "it depends on what your standard of measurement is."
"If your standard of measurement is `Is this a normal and genuine attempt to use the referendum in a way democracies normally do to settle contentious issues?' it's not really that.
"It still remains in the category of a highly symbolic move, and it is primarily designed to promote the domestic political fortunes of one candidate," he said.
"It could have been a lot worse. So I think officially what the United States is going to say is we don't endorse any particular referendum, but it's not something that we are going to oppose. We'll write it off as Taiwan's own business and their domestic politics."
The US will judge the referendum on more than just its wording, the official said. Washington will look at it in a broader way.
"It's not just the words. It's the actions and the context that Chen and others are going to put to this. So, we'll see how he pitches things to a variety of audiences. Like a good politician, he has been known to speak to his core supporters in one way, and others in other ways," the official said.
The referendum issue is not likely to be a long-lasting irritant to US-Taiwan relations, officials say. "We've never wanted to define our relationship through the prism of a referendum. It's a more comprehensive relationship than just that," the official said.
Bush, the official said, in his rebuff to Chen's earlier referendum plan, "was clear in what he thought was going on and directed himself at what he thought the leader of Taiwan was going to do."
ACCOUNTABILITY: The incident, which occured at a Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store in Taichung, was allegedly caused by a gas explosion on the 12th floor Shin Kong Group (新光集團) president Richard Wu (吳昕陽) yesterday said the company would take responsibility for an apparent gas explosion that resulted in four deaths and 26 injuries at Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Zhonggang Store in Taichung yesterday. The Taichung Fire Bureau at 11:33am yesterday received a report saying that people were injured after an explosion at the department store on Section 3 of Taiwan Boulevard in Taichung’s Situn District (西屯). It sent 56 ambulances and 136 paramedics to the site, with the people injured sent to Cheng Ching Hospital’s Chung Kang Branch, Wuri Lin Shin Hospital, Taichung Veterans General Hospital or Chung
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
There is no need for one country to control the semiconductor industry, which is complex and needs a division of labor, Taiwan’s top technology official said yesterday after US President Donald Trump criticized the nation’s chip dominance. Trump repeated claims on Thursday that Taiwan had taken the industry and he wanted it back in the US, saying he aimed to restore US chip manufacturing. National Science and Technology Council Minister Wu Cheng-wen (吳誠文) did not name Trump in a Facebook post, but referred to President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments on Friday that Taiwan would be a reliable partner in the