US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday announced that the US Department of State is voiding long-standing restrictions on how US diplomats and others have contact with their counterparts in Taiwan, just a little over a week before US president-elect Joe Biden is sworn in.
Pompeo instructed executive branch agencies to consider “all ‘contact guidelines’ regarding relations with Taiwan ... to be null and void.”
“For several decades the State Department has created complex internal restrictions to regulate our diplomats, service members, and other officials’ interactions with their Taiwanese counterparts,” Pompeo said in a statement.
Photo: Reuters
“The United States government took these actions unilaterally, in an attempt to appease the Communist regime in Beijing. No more,” he said.
“Our two democracies share common values of individual freedom, the rule of law, and a respect for human dignity,” Pompeo said. “Today’s statement recognizes that the US-Taiwan relationship need not, and should not, be shackled by self-imposed restrictions of our permanent bureaucracy.”
The announcement was the latest in a series of moves by US President Donald Trump’s administration to reshape the US’ relationship with Taiwan.
“While the implications of the announcement are not yet clear, it seems the intent is to nudge unofficial US-Taiwan relations toward something more akin to official ties,” said Maggie Lewis, a law professor at Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey, who has written extensively on Taiwan and China.
US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft is expected to visit Taipei this week, in the first such visit since Taiwan was excluded from the UN in 1971.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had earlier called Craft’s planned visit “a breach of the ‘one China’ principle” and accused Pompeo of “staging a final show of madness” to “sabotage China-US relations.”
Saturday’s announcement by Pompeo is one of a number the administration has launched or strengthened in the final days of its term, including an initiative to punish companies with close ties to the Chinese military.
US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs David Stilwell yesterday told the Financial Times that the decision was not rushed ahead of Biden’s inauguration, but was the result of a lengthy review of the Taiwan-US relationship.
“We have been trying to rectify the overall US-China relationship and this is one more step in that direction,” Stilwell said, urging the Biden administration to continue the policy direction.
“Best case, the Biden administration sees this as a blank slate, and starts an internal process to develop what the ideal US-Taiwan engagement structure and process looks like, consistent with the unofficial relationship, shared democratic values, and the benefits the bilateral relationship brings,” said Drew Thompson, a former US Department of Defense official responsible for Taiwan policy.
An official in Biden’s transition team on Saturday said that Biden believes US support for Taiwan must remain “strong, principled and bipartisan,” and that he would work to ensure that.
Biden would support “a peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues consistent with the wishes and best interests of the people of Taiwan,” the official said.
The president-elect is committed to the Taiwan Relations Act, which serves as a guide for US interaction with Taiwan in the absence of official diplomatic ties, they added.
Additional reporting by Lu Yi-hsuan and CNA
INCURSION: After 13 PLA aircraft flew into Taiwan’s ADIZ, the US Department of State said that China should rather ‘engage in meaningful dialogue’ with Taiwan US President Joe Biden’s administration on Saturday urged China to stop placing military pressure on Taiwan, while calling on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to engage in peaceful dialogue. The statement by the US Department of State was issued after 13 Chinese military aircraft flew into Taiwan’s southwest air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Saturday, the highest number observed in a single day this year, the Ministry of National Defense said. The air force scrambled fighter jets to monitor the Chinese aircraft, issuing radio warnings and mobilizing air defense assets until the planes left the ADIZ. The US “notes
‘INCREASED VIGILANCE’: A source of infection has not yet been found for the latest two cases in a hospital cluster, which should serve as a warning, Chen Shih-chung said A total of 2,991 people associated with a COVID-19 cluster infection at Taoyuan General Hospital have been put under home isolation, after an emergency expanded isolation order was issued on Sunday evening, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. Fifteen people have so far tested positive in the cluster infection. The first case in the cluster (case No. 838) was reported on Jan. 12 — a doctor who treated an infected patient who had returned from the US. Contact tracing for the first 13 cases found connections to case No. 838, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who
CHANGE OF GUARD: Hsiao Bi-khim’s attendance at Joe Biden’s inauguration will come as a boost to those in Taiwan who feared that the new US administration would be less friendly than that of Donald Trump to the nation Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) is to attend US President Joe Biden’s swearing-in ceremony at the US Capitol after she was invited by the US Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, a news release issued by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) in the US said last night. The news came as a surprise as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been reticent about the matter, while Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members had accused the Democratic Progressive Party administration of hedging its bets on the Republican Party. Asked about when Hsiao received the invitation, the ministry did not
FAMILY UNIT: The CECC warned that the eldest sister of the latest case, who also has COVID-19, visited Taoyuan’s Chungping evening market on Tuesday and Wednesday The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported a domestic case of COVID-19, associated with a recent cluster infection at Taoyuan General Hospital, and two imported cases. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that the latest case (No. 885) is a woman in her 50s, who is the third daughter of case No. 881, a man in his 90s. The woman is the main caregiver of her elderly father, who had been hospitalized earlier this month and was treated by a nurse (case No. 852) from Monday to Thursday last week, he said, adding that
RSS