If Taiwan were attacked, the global economy would face devastation, as that is where most of the world’s semiconductors are produced, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday.
In an interview that aired on the 60 Minutes television program, Blinken was asked whether instability across the Taiwan Strait would be felt around the world.
Blinken said that China has been increasingly aggressive against Taiwan, posing a threat to peace and stability in the region, while economically the world would feel the effects of such aggression.
Photo: screen grab from CBS
Blinken was interviewed for the program after meeting with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Friday.
The US has invested heavily in its semiconductor capacity, with US firms designing chips that are primarily produced in Taiwan, he said.
“Taiwan itself, were anything to happen, it is where virtually all the semiconductors are made,” Blinken said. “If that’s disrupted, the effects that that would have on the global economy could be devastating.”
In an interview that aired on the previous Sunday on the same program, US President Joe Biden said that the US would defend Taiwan “if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.”
It was the fourth time Biden implied the US would help Taiwan, although each time it has been followed by a clarification from administration officials who seemed to walk back his comments.
When Blinken was asked whether Wang requested clarification of Biden’s remarks when they met, he said they had a conversion about the two approaches toward Taiwan.
“I reiterated what the president has said, and what he’s said clearly and consistently — our continued adherence to the ‘one China’ policy, our determination that the differences be resolved peacefully,” Blinken said.
“Our insistence that peace and stability be maintained in the Taiwan Strait, and our deep concern that China was taking actions to try to change that status quo. That’s what the issue is,” he said.
The US has over the past few decades maintained a stance characterized as “strategic ambiguity” regarding whether it would aid Taiwan’s defense in the event of an attack by China.
Washington has traditionally been deliberately vague about whether the US would do more than provide Taiwan with weapons, as per the Taiwan Relations Act, and send troops to fight China.
The act became law in 1979 to maintain commercial, cultural and other unofficial relations between the US and Taiwan after Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
The act requires the US to “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character.”
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
RSS