Taiwan should “trust, but verify” reports that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) denied that Beijing plans to invade Taiwan in 2027, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) vice presidential candidate Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told reporters yesterday.
“We anticipate and we hope that Chairman Xi Jinping was sincere when he said there was no timetable” for bringing Taiwan under control by force, said Hsiao, who earlier this week resigned as the representative to the US to join the ticket of DPP nominee, Vice President William Lai (賴清德).
Borrowing a phrase from former US president Ronald Reagan — which US President Joe Biden also used after his bilateral meeting with Xi in San Francisco on Wednesday last week — Hsiao said that Taiwan should “trust, but verify.”
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
A senior US administration official cited Xi as denying reports that China planned to take military action against Taiwan in 2027 or 2035 during last week’s bilateral meeting.
However, Xi also laid out the conditions under which force could be used, the official said, without specifying what those conditions were.
While the future Lai administration would welcome every opportunity to work with Beijing to maintain the “status quo,” Taiwan needs to continue building up its capability so as to deal with cross-strait relations with more confidence, Hsiao said.
Hsiao alluded to a “four-pillar plan” for peace proposed by Lai, with Taiwan boosting its defense capability and economic security, while seeking international partnerships and “principled and pragmatic” cross-strait relations.
The plan was modeled on the policy of outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), with whom Beijing has refused to establish official contact, despite repeated requests during her eight years in office.
However, with Beijing labeling Lai and Hsiao as “separatists,” Hsiao was asked how the DPP ticket aims to resume government-to-government talks if elected in January.
Hsiao reiterated that they “remain open to dialogue” and would be “committed to the status quo.”
“It’s also important that [those in] the international community who agree with our position in continuing peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait make clear to our counterpart across the Taiwan Strait that dialogue is the only way to resolve differences,” Hsiao said.
“War is not an option,” she added.
When it comes to the US, Taiwan has to forge unified and bipartisan support, Hsiao said, adding that expanding broad support among Americans was critical.
“American support to Taiwan cannot be limited to the beltway,” Hsiao said, referring to the Washington political scene. “A rock solid partnership with the United States is critically important right now.”
Speaking of her decision to join Lai’s ticket, Hsiao, who had served four non-consecutive terms as a legislator prior to being posted to Washington in 2020, acknowledged having “tremendous hesitation” about returning to Taiwan and getting involved again in domestic politics.
While such a decision was “not an easy one,” Hsiao said that her alliance with Lai was forged based on their shared commitment to preserve Taiwan’s freedom and democracy.
Additional reporting by Reuters
‘UNFRIENDLY’: Changing the nationality listing of Taiwanese residents to ‘China’ goes against EU foreign policy as well as democratic and human rights principles, MOFA said Taiwan yesterday called on Denmark to correct its designation of the nationality of Taiwanese residents as “China” or face retaliatory measures. The Danish government in 2024 changed the nationality of Taiwanese citizens on their residence permits from “Taiwan” to “China.” The decision goes against EU foreign policy and contravenes democratic and human rights principles, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said. Denmark should present a solution acceptable to Taiwan as soon as possible and correct the erroneous designation to preserve the longstanding friendship between the two nations, Hsiao said. The issue could damage Denmark’s image and business reputation in Taiwan,
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
Taiwan climbed to its highest position in global export rankings in more than three decades last year, buoyed by demand linked to artificial intelligence (AI) that lifted shipments of semiconductors and technology products, Ministry of Finance data released yesterday showed. Taiwan accounted for 2.4 percent of global exports last year, or about US$640 billion, ranking 12th worldwide, the data showed. That was up four places from a year earlier and marked the nation’s best ranking since 1994, the ministry said. Taiwan’s share of global exports rose by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, the largest increase among major economies, reflecting the nation’s
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
RSS