President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday reaffirmed his government’s commitment to continue bolstering Taiwan’s defense capabilities through promoting military reforms and increasing spending while meeting with Japanese parliamentarians, and reiterated a similar message in a meeting with US lawmakers on the same day.
Lai made the remarks while hosting a delegation led by Japanese Representative Shigeru Ishiba, adding that Taiwan and Japan should shore up their ties to secure peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.
Taiwan and Japan have an abiding friendship that has grown stronger from the shared challenges of earthquakes and the global COVID-19 pandemic, Lai said, adding that the two nations have a brotherly bond.
Photo courtesy of the Presidential Office
Taipei and Tokyo would maintain their partnership to confront more global challenges to come, he said.
Taiwan has the will and determination to protect its national security, and work in partnership with fellow democracies to counter the threat to regional peace posed by China’s rise, Lai said.
Lai outlined his administration’s four pillars of peace, which are defensive military capabilities, economic resilience, alliances with democratic nations, and diplomacy with Beijing under the conditions of equality and dignity.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan would seek to increase its defense capabilities via increasing its domestic arms industry, making foreign military purchases, and the rigorous training of its armed forces to defend the nation and maintain peace in the region, he said.
Taiwan continues to develop its economy while deepening trade ties with Japan and other nations in the global alliance of democracies, including signing the first-phase agreements on the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade, Lai said.
Concurrently, Taiwan inked the Enhanced Trade Partnership Arrangement with the UK and looks to cooperate more with Japan to combine their economic advantages, he said, adding that Tokyo’s help with the nation’s Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership application would be deeply appreciated.
Taiwan must stand shoulder to shoulder with its partners in an alliance of democracies to deter China from making misguided decisions, Lai said.
Taipei is willing to engage with Beijing so long as the latter is willing to conduct dialogue based on equality and respect, he said, adding that the nation looks forward to protecting freedom, democracy and peace alongside friends including Japan.
Ishiba, who arrived in Taiwan with a bipartisan delegation of Diet members on Monday for a three-day visit, said Taiwan and Japan should continue their cooperation to strengthen deterrence and promote economic development in the region.
He said the war in Ukraine is protracted because of “insufficient” deterrence mustered by democratic nations against Russia, adding that the urgent task was to prevent Northeast Asia from becoming the next Ukraine.
Also joining Ishiba, who served as Japanese minister of defense from 2007 to 2008, were other members of the Diet’s House of Representatives — Seiji Maehara, Gen Nakatani, Akihisa Nagashima, Shu Watanabe and Keiro Kitagami.
All six, who have either held top government positions related to defense or served in the prime minister’s office, are part of a Diet group focused on Japan’s security and foreign affairs.
Lai later yesterday also conveyed similar messages concerning defense when he met with a delegation of Democrats from the US House of Representatives led by Marilyn Strickland. She was accompanied at the meeting by three other US representatives — Julia Brownley, Jill Tokuda and Jasmine Crockett.
“Security across the Taiwan Strait is crucial to global stability and prosperity,” Lai said. “As a responsible member of the international community, Taiwan will neither yield nor provoke as we seek to maintain the status quo.”
Taiwan also looks forward to collaborating with the US and other partners to promote peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the Indo-Pacific region in the face of authoritarian expansionism, he said.
Strickland, a member of the House Committee on Armed Services, underscored the importance of deterrence in preventing potential Chinese aggression.
As ties between Taiwan and the US have in part “evolved because of potential aggression” from the other side of the Taiwan Strait, “we want to deter anything that will come across the Strait and create a situation where we have to get involved in a conflict,” she said.
“That is not what we want to do,” Strickland said, describing deterrence as being about “projecting strength, power and unity.”
Democratic nations should stand together and continue to promote freedom and democracy, especially with adversaries around the world seeking to destabilize democracy by spreading disinformation and meddling with elections, she said, without specifying who the adversaries were.
Strickland said members of the delegation were “steadfast and resolute in our support for Taiwan.”
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities. The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg Stanton, and Democratic Representative Dave Min. US Senators John Curtis and Jacky Rosen also introduced a companion bill in the US Senate, which has passed markup at the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Relations. The House’s version of the bill would prioritize the deployment of sensors to detect disruptions or potential sabotage in real-time and enhance early warning capabilities through global intelligence sharing frameworks,
RSS