Nine members of the US House of Representatives have called on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to make a stopover in Taipei on his planned trip to Beijing tomorrow and Monday in keeping with the spirit of the Taiwan Travel Act and honor what Blinken called a “rock solid” commitment from the administration of US President Joe Biden to Taiwan.
The request was made in a joint letter signed by Republican representatives Tom Tiffany, Scott Perry, Dan Crenshaw, Andy Ogles, Burgess Owens, Nancy Mace, Scott DesJarles, Byron Donalds and Earl Carter.
The letter was sent to Blinken on Wednesday.
Photo: Reuters
If Blinken visits Taipei, it would “send a clear message that the United States strongly opposes China’s reckless military provocations in the region — actions which President Biden has described as ‘coercive’ and a threat to regional peace and stability,” the representatives said in the letter.
It would also be an opportunity for Blinken to “publicly address growing concerns about recent delays in the delivery of US weapons systems to Taiwan,” they wrote.
“Some of these systems are related to arms sales that were approved as long ago as 2019 and include everything from F-16s to other asymmetric weapons that are critical to Taiwan’s defensive capabilities,” they added.
A visit to Taiwan by Blinken would be “consistent with the congressional intent of the Taiwan Travel Act, which made it the express policy of the United States to encourage high-ranking US executive branch officials to visit Taiwan and meet with their counterparts,” they wrote.
The representatives asked Blinken to consider their request in the interest of improving bilateral ties between Taiwan and the US.
Blinken’s planned visit to China would be be the first by an incumbent US secretary of state since October 2018.
At press time yesterday however, a US official said Blinken has put off the visit to Beijing after the discovery of an alleged Chinese spy balloon in US airspace.
Separately, US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Thursday said that China cannot decide where he can go, although he currently has no plans to visit Taiwan.
“I don’t think China can tell me where I can go at any place, at any time,” McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol when asked what his reaction was to China’s warning against him visiting Taiwan.
US media outlet Punchbowl News on Monday last week reported that the Pentagon was in the early stages of preparing for a trip by McCarthy to Taiwan in the spring, citing a Biden administration official with knowledge of the matter.
However, McCarthy on Thursday said that he had “nothing scheduled now on Taiwan.”
China staged several days of large-scale military exercises around Taiwan in August last year following a visit by then-US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei, in a move seen as retaliation for the visit.
Since then, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has routinely breached the Taiwan Strait median line with its air force and navy. The line has traditionally served as a tacitly understood boundary.
Additional reporting by AFP
This article has been updated since it was first posted.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS