The US Senate on Tuesday passed legislation asking the government to help Taiwan keep its remaining 15 diplomatic allies, while supporting its international presence.
The legislation titled Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act of 2019, or TAIPEI Act 2019, was unanimously passed.
The act, initiated by US Senator Cory Gardner, was introduced in May to express US support for Taiwan’s diplomatic alliances.
In September last year, Gardner initiated TAIPEI Act 2018, but it failed to clear the Senate.
This year’s act authorizes the US Department of State to consider “reducing its economic, security and diplomatic engagements with nations that take serious or significant actions to undermine Taiwan.”
The US government should also help Taiwan gain participation in international organizations, either as a member or an observer, and express its support for Taiwan’s international participation when it interacts with Beijing, the act says.
The bill’s passage came one day before the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee was set to review its own version of the act.
Once it passes the House, a committee made up of both legislative bodies would work out differences between the two versions to come up with a single version before returning the bill to both bodies for approval.
The act would then be sent for the approval of US President Donald Trump, who would have 10 days to sign it into law, or veto it.
In related news on Tuesday, the nominee to become the next US ambassador to the Marshall Islands pledged to do her best to help Taiwan keep the Pacific ally.
Speaking at her nomination hearing before the Senate, Roxanne Cabral said that the Marshall Islands, as one of Taiwan’s 15 diplomatic partners, “plays an important role in maintaining stability in cross-strait relations.”
She pledged, if confirmed as ambassador, to work hard to maintain the US’ strong partnership with the Marshall Islands, together with Taiwan.
Asked what she would do keep the Marshall Islands as a close ally of the US and Taiwan, she said that pushing back against China would be important.
“If confirmed, I would try to strengthen this relationship, encourage a stronger relationship and help the Marshall Islands create an environment that can push back on predatory economic practices of China that we have been seeing around the world,” she said.
Cabral listed ways to support Taiwan and fight against Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, which the US sees as creating debt traps in the countries that join the initiative.
Transparency should be increased and “bad deals” exposed, while also providing better alternatives and maintaining a strong presence in the region, she told the hearing.
Cabral, who is likely to be confirmed, said there are positive signs that relations remain strong.
Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine and the nation’s parliament expressed their support for Taiwan after it lost two Pacific allies last month, while Heine visited Taiwan last week and witnessed the signing of two bilateral agreements, Cabral said.
The career diplomat most recently served as deputy chief of mission and charge d’affaires at the US embassy in Panama. She has also served in Guangzhou, China, and speaks Chinese and Spanish, according to the US Department of State.
Four of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies are in the Pacific region: the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau and Tuvalu.
The National Security Council has warned that the nation could lose more before the Jan. 11 presidential and legislative elections.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
MANAGING DIFFERENCES: In a meeting days after the US president signed a massive foreign aid bill, Antony Blinken raised concerns with the Chinese president about Taiwan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues