The US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is on Wednesday to deliberate on the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022.
The deliberations were originally scheduled to take place on July 9, but were postponed to Sept. 3 after some Republican senators requested more time to study the bill. It was further postponed as the US Senate first handled Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO membership applications.
Robert Sutter, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University, in an article published in The Diplomat on Saturday said that bipartisan majorities in both chambers of the US Congress indicate support for Taiwan.
Photo: AFP
“Supporting Taiwan as an important partner in dealing with these challenges [from China] remains a high priority,” he wrote.
China increased military exercises around Taiwan after US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei early last month.
However, that did not deter further US congressional visits to Taipei or efforts by the administration of US President Joe Biden to foster closer ties with Taiwan, he wrote.
The bill calls for “more symbolic moves in the legislation,” such as renaming Taiwan’s de facto embassy in Washington from the “Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office” to the “Taiwan Representative Office,” Newsweek reported on Thursday.
It also proposes changing the title “American Institute in Taiwan [AIT] director” to “AIT representative,” the appointment of which would require Senate confirmation similar to ambassadorial appointments.
The US might also designate Taiwan a “major non-NATO ally,” as it has done for Australia, Israel, Japan and South Korea, to facilitate arms sales, the magazine reported.
Although some elements of the bill might be discarded, the US is “unlikely to halt future debate” on its Taiwan policies, as China has been increasing pressure on Taiwan, Newsweek reported.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has told reporters that “some of the contents [of the bill] made us worried.”
Kuo Yu-jen (郭育仁), a professor at National Sun Yat-sen University’s Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies, on Saturday said that the US Congress appears to be seeking “pre-emptive preparedness” with the bill.
Each Taiwan-friendly act the US passes would serve as a legal basis for its administration to formulate policies, most of which are “compliant with the baseline,” he said.
It is therefore reasonable for Sullivan to worry about the bill, as some of its provisions might exceed the baseline established in the past, he added.
The US executive branch might be concerned that the bill would prompt China to take an even stronger stance against Taiwan in the “overall strategy for resolving the Taiwan dilemma in the new era,” which China plans to propose during the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party next month, he said.
However, it is because of Beijing’s tough measures that the US Congress proposed the bill, which seeks to bolster US strategies according to changes in the relationship between the US, Taiwan and China, he said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS