US President Joe Biden’s remarks that US troops would help defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion “speak for themselves,” US National Security Council Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell said on Monday, adding that US policy on Taiwan remains consistent and unchanged.
In a prerecorded interview with the CBS show 60 Minutes that aired on Sunday, Biden told host Scott Pelley that the US would defend Taiwan “if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.”
“So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, US forces — US men and women — would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?” Pelley asked.
Photo: Reuters
“Yes,” Biden said.
After the interview, a White House official said US policy on Taiwan had not changed, according to 60 Minutes.
Campbell said he did not believe it was appropriate to describe the White House statement “as walking back the president’s remarks.”
Photo courtesy of the Control Yuan
“The president’s remarks speak for themselves. I do think our policy has been consistent and is unchanged and will continue,” he said during an online conference organized by the Washington-based think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The US’ primary goal is to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait to secure and stabilize the “status quo,” make sure there is healthy dialogue between the sides and try to avoid escalation, he said.
Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told reporters in Washington that she believed Biden “speaks his mind.”
Taipei and Washington would continue to work closely to maintain peace and security in the region, and maintain the “status quo,” she added.
Taiwanese academics said that Biden’s remark is meant to reaffirm Washington’s commitment to Taipei and deter Beijing.
Biden is gradually moving away from “strategic ambiguity,” because he has full confidence in President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) pledge to maintain the “status quo,” said Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), director of the National Security Research Division at the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
Taiwan’s restraint in response to China’s increasingly assertive military coercion has assured Biden that Taipei would not take any aggressive action, Shen said.
Taiwan’s actions have been defensive in nature and are meant to bolster its sovereignty instead of declaring independence, he added.
Biden’s remarks also express a tougher stance against China following Beijing’s drills around Taiwan last month, with an eye on the US midterm elections, said Shen, a retired army infantry battalion commander.
Chieh Chung (揭仲), an associate defense research fellow at the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) National Policy Foundation think tank, said he believed the US “would definitely in some way intervene” if China launched a full-scale invasion of Taiwan.
Washington would not sit idly by if Beijing attempted to unilaterally change the “status quo” in the west Pacific by force, because that would undermine the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy and lead other US allies to question its leadership, he said.
However, Chieh said he was concerned because Washington does not have a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan and Beijing has nuclear weapons.
Washington could intervene “too late” and deploy “too few” military resources to aid Taiwan, he added.
During the interview Biden also said that “Taiwan makes their own judgements about their independence. We are not encouraging their being independent. That’s their decision.”
His critics said that China could perceive the comments as tacit support for an independence declaration.
They added that his comments are more likely to aggravate hostilities than overt defense commitments, as Beijing already likely assumes Washington would defend Taiwan.
“It is incoherent to argue that America’s Taiwan policy has not changed while also claiming that the US has a commitment to fight for Taiwan and that Taiwan makes its own judgements about independence,” said Craig Singleton, a China policy expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Beijing will likely worry that Biden is suggesting Taiwan can decide for itself whether it is independent, he added.
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