Vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) on Thursday met with two Lithuanian presidential candidates during a low-key visit to Vilnius, a Lithuanian national security expert said on Friday.
Hsiao met with Dainius Zalimas of the Freedom Party, part of the ruling block, and Giedrimas Jeglinskas of the opposition Union of Democrats “For Lithuania,” Marius Laurinaviciusin wrote on Facebook.
The meeting not only showcased Zalimas’ consistent pro-Taiwan stance, but also hinted at a potential shift in attitude toward Taipei within the opposition bloc, wrote Laurinaviciusin, a Lithuanian journalist and political commentator who also attended the meeting.
Photo: Screen grab from Marius Laurinaviciusin’s Facebook page
In addition to the talks, Hsiao visited Taiwan-friendly politicians and gave a speech about the nation’s democratic development at the Institute of International Relations and Political Sciences in Vilnius, he said.
It is regrettable that the news was neither disclosed by any local politicians nor covered by the media, he added.
“In any case, this visit was really the most important event of today in Lithuania in the field of international relations,” he said.
Laurinaviciusin also praised Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil, who on Tuesday posted a photograph on X of him meeting with Hsiao.
The incoming vice president’s low-key Czech trip came after she reportedly visited the US in a personal capacity earlier this month. Both triggered anger from China.
Yesterday, Zygimantas Pavilionis, chairman of the Lithuanian Semias’ Foreign Affairs Committee, posted on X group photos of Hsiao and himself with his Estonian and Latvian counterparts — Marko Mihkelson and Rihards Kols.
Jason Worlledge, International Republican Institute resident program director of Eurasia and transatlantic strategies in Poland, posted a selfie of himself with Hsiao on X, saying it was great to have met her in Warsaw.
Hsiao first visited the Polish capital for a forum held by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation before traveling to Lithuania, a Polish academic said.
Hsiao, 52, served as Taiwan’s top representative to Washington from July 2020, before resigning from the post in November last year to be Vice President William Lai’s (賴清德) running mate in the Jan. 13 presidential race.
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,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS