President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Saturday arrived in Houston for a brief transit stop on her way to Central America, a routine stopover that has been closely watched by Beijing after US president-elect Donald Trump spoke with her by telephone early last month.
Tsai touched down in Houston after setting out from Taiwan earlier in the day on her way to Honduras, the first leg of a nine-day trip. She is also to visit to Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador, in that order.
Tsai was met at the airport by US Representative for Texas Blake Farenthold, American Institute in Taiwan Chairman James Moriarty and Taiwan’s Representative to the US Stanley Kao (高碩泰).
Photo: Reuters
The US Bureau of Diplomatic Security adopted high-level security measures for Tsai’s stopover.
When Tsai visited Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, traffic controls were imposed, and police officers escorted her, while the museum was cleared for three hours.
Tsai also visited a Formosa Plastics Corp (台灣塑膠) facility in Point Comfort and a Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠) facility in Wharton. She was accompanied by Farenthold.
Tsai is scheduled to stay in Houston for one night after attending a dinner in her honor which is to be attended by several US officials, including Farenthold, US Representative for Texas Al Green, Moriarty and about 600 expat Taiwanese.
Moriarty was quoted by a Democratic Progressive Party legislator as saying that he would continue to promote good relations between Taiwan and the US, as the two nations share common values.
The Houston stop has taken on a new significance since Tsai’s telephone call with Trump last month. It was the first reported telephone call between a Taiwanese president and a US president or president-elect since 1979.
Tsai is scheduled to make a stopover in San Francisco on Jan. 13, after leaving El Salvador on her way back to Taiwan.
It is Tsai’s second overseas trip since taking office on May 20 last year. Tsai visited Panama in June last year.
TPP RALLY: The clashes occurred near the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on Saturday at a rally to mark the anniversary of a raid on former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je People who clashed with police at a Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) rally in Taipei on Saturday would be referred to prosecutors for investigation, said the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the National Police Agency. Taipei police had collected evidence of obstruction of public officials and coercion by “disorderly” demonstrators, as well as contraventions of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), the ministry said in a statement on Sunday. It added that amid the “severe pushing and jostling” by some demonstrators, eight police officers were injured, including one who was sent to hospital after losing consciousness, allegedly due to heat stroke. The Taipei
NO LIVERPOOL TRIP: Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who won a gold medal in the boxing at the Paris Olympics, was embroiled in controversy about her gender at that event Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) will not attend this year’s World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, England, due to a lack of response regarding her sex tests from the organizer, World Boxing. The national boxing association on Monday said that it had submitted all required tests to World Boxing, but had not received a response as of Monday, the departure day for the championships. It said the decision for Lin to skip the championships was made to protect its athletes, ensuring they would not travel to the UK without a guarantee of participation. Lin, who won a gold medal in the women’s 57kg boxing
The US has revoked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) authorization to freely ship essential gear to its main Chinese chipmaking base, potentially curtailing its production capabilities at that older-generation facility. American officials recently informed TSMC of their decision to end the Taiwanese chipmaker’s so-called validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing site. The action mirrors steps the US took to revoke VEU designations for China facilities owned by Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc. The waivers are set to expire in about four months. “TSMC has received notification from the US Government that our VEU authorization for TSMC Nanjing
CHINESE INCURSIONS, SORTIES: President William Lai thanked military officers for shouldering the responsibility of defending the survival and development of Taiwan President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said that aggression would inevitably fail, pointing — on the day before a mass military parade in Beijing — to the lessons from World War II and key victories Taiwan claims against Chinese forces in 1958. Taiwan has over the past five years repeatedly complained about heightened Chinese military activity including war games around the nation as Beijing steps up pressure to enforce territorial claims that Taipei rejects. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), flanked by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, are to oversee a military parade in Beijing today to mark the
RSS