The US and Japan on Friday said that maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is essential to security in the Indo-Pacific region.
The joint statement was released by the White House after a meeting in Washington between US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to discuss their countries’ alliance and security issues, including possible conflicts in the Taiwan Strait.
“We emphasize that our basic positions on Taiwan remain unchanged, and reiterate the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as an indispensable element of security and prosperity in the international community,” the statement said.
Photo: Reuters
“We encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues,” it added.
Biden and Kishida said that their alliance remains the cornerstone of welfare in the Indo-Pacific region.
However, they also recognize that the challenges their countries face transcend geography, particularly as a result of the war in Ukraine.
“United across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, we have stood together in firm opposition to Russia’s unjust and brutal war of aggression against Ukraine, and we will continue to impose sanctions on Russia, and provide unwavering support for Ukraine,” the statement said.
The leaders also exchanged their views about the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a US-led multilateral partnership involving 13 other countries, including Japan, that has been touted as a bulwark against China’s growing economic influence in the region, it said.
“As inclusive democracies, we will ensure economic prosperity is broadly shared across our societies and recommit to achieving gender equity and equality as well as women’s empowerment,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, Biden and Kishida also urged Beijing to do its part to report epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data regarding the spread of COVID-19 across China to enable global public health officials to identify possible new variants and to reduce their spread.
In Taipei, Ministry of Foreign Affairs deputy spokesperson Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) yesterday said: “Maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait has clearly become the consensus of the international community, in the face of China’s expansionism, which challenges the global democratic order, and has aroused the concerns of liberal and democratic countries worldwide.”
Taiwan is bolstering its self-defense capabilities and resisting threats to its sovereignty, Hsiao said.
“We will also deepen cooperation with the US, Japan and other like-minded countries to safeguard the security of the Taiwan Strait, jointly promote development in the Indo-Pacific region, and ensure peace, stability and economic prosperity,” 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,
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