Taiwan is willing to partner with members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) and can play an important role in addressing key issues that the group hopes to tackle, Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said on Thursday.
The Quad was to hold its first in-person summit yesterday.
The issues — climate change, COVID-19, the restructuring of supply chains and regional security — are Taiwanese interests, Hsiao told India’s Tv9 Telugu, which identified her as “Taiwan ambassador” to the US.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan seeks to establish partnerships with Quad member states, and other like-minded nations in the region, to address these issues, she added.
Taiwan and India have many common interests on which they could collaborate, such as technology and manufacturing, she said.
They could also work together on vaccine manufacturing, as India has demonstrated its resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic with its robust vaccine production, she said.
Asked about Taiwan’s “secret” to resisting China, Hsiao said that Taiwan just wants to survive and that its democracy had been hard-won with many sacrifices.
Taiwan has created a strong economy backed by legal institutions, and has also performed well in technology and other sectors, she said.
Taiwanese love freedom, and want to survive and defend that freedom, she said, adding that it is not looking for a fight, but wants to freely interact with other nations.
US-Taiwan relations are “rock solid”, and both nations share similar values and interests, such as democracy and liberty, as well as the safety and economic prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region, Hsiao said.
Bilateral ties have improved greatly over the past few years, as the nations collaborate on economic and security issues and support democracy, she said.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS