The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday thanked the US and South Korea for showing their concern for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, after US President Joe Biden and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday in a joint statement underscored the importance of cross-strait peace and stability.
The comment echoed a similar statement by Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on April 16 and a joint communique of G7 foreign ministers on May 5, the ministry said.
Taiwan has been playing a key role in regional stability and prosperity, given its important location in the first island chain of East Asia, it said, adding that the government would continue to work with the US and other like-minded partners to defend democracy and the rules-based international order.
Photo: AP
Biden wants Moon to take a strong stance on China’s activity toward Taiwan and other provocative moves Beijing has made in the region.
Biden on Friday also said he and Moon are “deeply concerned” about the situation with North Korea, adding that he would deploy a new special envoy to the region to help refocus efforts on pressing Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Meanwhile, Moon welcomed “America’s return” to the world stage and said both leaders pledged in their meeting to work closely toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Biden told a joint news conference with Moon that he was dispatching career diplomat Sung Kim, who previously served as ambassador to South Korea, to serve as the special envoy to the region.
Moon said the move by Biden “reflects the firm commitment of the US for exploring diplomacy and its readiness for dialogue with North Korea.”
Biden also announced that the US would vaccinate 550,000 South Korean service members who serve alongside US forces on the peninsula.
This marks the first commitment by the Biden administration for what it plans to do with the 80 million vaccine doses it aims to distribute globally in the next six weeks.
Biden has said he hopes to use domestically produced vaccines as a modern-day “arsenal of democracy,” a reference to the US effort to arm allies in World War II. At the same time, the White House has pledged not to attach policy conditions to countries receiving the doses as global vaccine diplomacy heats up.
Moon traveled to Washington seeking renewed diplomatic urgency by the US on curbing North Korea’s nuclear program, even as the White House signaled that it is taking a longer view on the issue.
The two also discussed coordination on vaccine distribution, climate change and regional security concerns spurred by China.
Their meeting was Biden’s second in-person session with a foreign leader because of the COVID-19 pandemic. His first was with Suga.
Moon said afterward that he and Biden spoke “like old friends” and emphasized the need for cooperation on security issues in the region.
“The most urgent common task that our two countries must undertake is achieving complete denuclearization and permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula,” he said.
Biden did not rule out meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
However, in a veiled reference to former US president Donald Trump’s charm offensive with Kim, Biden said he would not replicate the efforts of the “recent past.”
Trump met face-to-face with the leader on three occasions and exchanged what he called “love letters” with him.
“I would not give him all that he’s looking for,” Biden said of Kim, namely “international recognition.”
His formal talks with Moon in the afternoon ran long, Biden said in earlier remarks, because “I enjoyed the meeting so much that it caused us to move everything back.”
Additional reporting by Lin Chia-nan
COMMITMENT: The world’s biggest contract chipmaker said that its new 2nm chips, as well as next-generation, cutting-edge 1.4nm chips, will be produced in Taiwan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that the majority of its most advanced chips would continue to be manufactured in Taiwan and that it is boosting advanced chip packaging capacity to catch up with fast-growing demand driven by generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications like ChatGPT. Deeply rooted in Taiwan, TSMC is expanding production capacity for its most advanced 3-nanometer (nm) chips at its Tainan fab and is building new plants to produce new 2-nanometer chips in Hsinchu and Taichung in 2025. The chipmaker also plans to produce next-generation, cutting-edge 1.4-nanometer chips, which are currently under development, at home, it
FIRST STEP: Business groups in Taiwan welcomed the deal, which does not include tariff reductions at this stage, as they called for the elimination of double taxation Taiwan and the US yesterday signed an initial agreement under the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade. The agreement was signed yesterday morning by Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Managing Director Ingrid Larson in Washington, the Office of Trade Negotiations in Taipei said. The ceremony was witnessed by Minister Without Portfolio John Deng (鄧振中) and Deputy US Trade Representative Sarah Bianchi. Taiwan and the US started talks under the initiative in August last year, after Taipei was left out of the Washington-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. “The deal that will be signed tonight is not only very historic,
PASSAGE DISPUTE: A US and Canadian transit was a provocation and an attempt to ‘exercise hegemony of navigation,’ China’s defense ministry told a forum in Singapore The Ministry of National Defense yesterday urged the Chinese Communist Party to avoid provocative behavior after a Chinese navy ship crossed the paths of a US destroyer and Canadian frigate transiting the Taiwan Strait. A Chinese ship on Saturday “executed maneuvers in an unsafe manner in the vicinity of [the USS] Chung-Hoon,” an American destroyer, the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement. The vessel “overtook Chung-Hoon on their port side and crossed their bow at 150 yards [137m]. Chung-Hoon maintained course and slowed to 10 [knots, 18.5kph] to avoid a collision,” the statement said. It then “crossed Chung-Hoon’s bow a second time
HARD-WON FREEDOM: Beijing’s 1989 crackdown on protesters has not been and should not be forgotten, as China tightens its grip on Hong Kong, Lai said Taiwanese enjoy democracy and freedom and have multiple ways to express their creativity, and hopefully young people in China would also one day have the freedom to sing and express themselves, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday, commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Yesterday was the 34th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s bloody crackdown on student-led protests in Beijing in 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident. Tsai posted a photograph taken in March in a subway station in Guizhou, China, where hundreds of young people gathered to sing People With No Ideals Don’t Get Hurt (沒有理想的人不傷心), saying that they