Taiwan is central to the global economy, and preventing a crisis or conflict across the Taiwan Strait should be a matter of concern for all US partners, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink said on Friday.
Kritenbrink made the comment at a discussion on the importance of US alliances in the Indo-Pacific region hosted by the Brookings Institution in Washington, which was also attended by US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner.
Kritenbrink said the US is committed to investing in its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region, and assisting them in building the collective capacity to mange the challenges they face, as that is the best way to manage the China challenge, which affects them as well as the US.
Photo: Screengrab from the Brookings Institution’s YouTube channel
As part of Washington’s diplomatic push in the region, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to Tonga, New Zealand and Australia next week, while US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is departing next week to visit Papua New Guinea and Australia.
Regarding Taiwan, Kritenbrink said that the US is trying to make the point that maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait should be a matter of international concern, as it is central to global security and prosperity.
“Fifty percent of the world’s container traffic flows to the Taiwan Strait, and 90 percent of the world’s high-end chips are made in Taiwan,” he said.
“Taiwan is central to the global economy,” Kritenbrink said. “Maintaining peace and stability and preventing a crisis or conflict across the Taiwan Strait should be a matter of concern for all of our partners in the region and around the world.
He said there has been no change to the US’ “one China” policy.
He said the US is committed to maintaining peace and stability, so its message to Beijing would be “to not challenge that status quo, to cease the provocative and coercive actions they have taken across the Strait and aimed at Taiwan.”
Ratner said he can see that Taiwan is committed to its own defense, as it has made a political commitment in terms of military and reservist reforms, and a substantial financial commitment with major increases in its defense budget.
“I look at what they do and how they are responding to the type of coercion they are under as a significant and reassuring sign of their commitment to their own resilience and defense,” he said.
Asked about his meeting with Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng (謝峰) on Wednesday last week, Ratner said they “had a very good discussion,” but he refused to characterize the discussions.
“I will say what Secretary Austin has emphasized on a number of occasions, which is that the US continues to seek open lines of communication with the PLA,” he said, referring to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
“We think this is important for stability in peace time and during potential crises, and it is unfortunate that the PLA has not responded to that outstretched hand,” Ratner said.
“We are going to continue to encourage open lines of communication without preconditions,” he added.
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
DEFENSE: The US would assist Taiwan in developing a new command and control system, and it would be based on the US-made Link-22, a senior official said The Ministry of National Defense is to propose a special budget to replace the military’s currently fielded command and control system, bolster defensive resilience and acquire more attack drones, a senior defense official said yesterday. The budget would be presented to the legislature in August, the source said on condition of anonymity. Taiwan’s decade-old Syun An (迅安, “Swift Security”) command and control system is a derivative of Lockheed Martin’s Link-16 developed under Washington’s auspices, they said. The Syun An system is difficult to operate, increasingly obsolete and has unresolved problems related to integrating disparate tactical data across the three branches of the military,
RSS