Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect.
Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision.
Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I had a great visit to Prague & thank the Czech authorities for their hospitality & ensuring my safety.”
Photo: Taipei Times
She also stressed that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) unlawful activities will not intimidate her from voicing Taiwan’s interests in the international community.
Meanwhile, the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee Majority on Saturday shared Hsiao’s post on its official X account and wrote: “Just as CCP crushed democracy in Hong Kong, it tried crushing the car of VICE PRESIDENT of Taiwan INSIDE a NATO member state.”
“This is the CCP’s criminality on display for the whole world to see,” it wrote. “This isn’t diplomacy, it’s coercion.”
On the same day, the official X account run by Democrat members of the US House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the CCP shared US magazine Newsweek’s report on the incident.
“The CCP’s planned attack on Taiwan’s then-VP-elect in Czechia is a clear escalation that highlights the growing threat of the CCP’s transnational repression,” it wrote.
“This is why the Taiwan Allies Fund Act was reintroduced this year,” it wrote, adding that the “[US] Congress must pass it now.”
Separately, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) on Saturday issued a statement on its X account, along with 60 signatures from lawmakers from 30 countries, calling on countries to condemn China’s attempt at politically motivated violence.
The IPAC said if the plan succeeded, it would have constituted state terror, and even as an attempt, the episode represented the crossing of a threshold.
“A state which is willing to plan such an overt act of politically motivated violence in a foreign country is not a state that can be said to respect international diplomatic norms,” the statement said.
The IPAC also expressed solidarity with Hsiao and Taiwanese who might be subject to coercion by China while traveling abroad.
Hsiao replied by sharing the IPAC statement on her X account and writing: “Thankful to global parliamentarians who have expressed solidarity against violence and coercion. Taiwan will not be isolated by intimidation.”
Additional reporting by Su Yung-yao
TAIWAN IS TAIWAN: US Representative Tom Tiffany said the amendment was not controversial, as ‘Taiwan is not — nor has it ever been — part of Communist China’ The US House of Representatives on Friday passed an amendment banning the US Department of Defense from creating, buying or displaying any map that shows Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The “Honest Maps” amendment was approved in a voice vote on Friday as part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for the 2026 fiscal year. The amendment prohibits using any funds from the act to create, buy or display maps that show Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu, Wuciou (烏坵), Green Island (綠島) or Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) as part of the PRC. The act includes US$831.5 billion in
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
Taiwan is hosting the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) for the first time, welcoming more than 400 young linguists from 43 nations to National Taiwan University (NTU). Deputy Minister of Education Chu Chun-chang (朱俊彰) said at the opening ceremony yesterday that language passes down knowledge and culture, and influences the way humankind thinks and understands the world. Taiwan is a multicultural and multilingual nation, with Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka, 16 indigenous languages and Taiwan Sign Language all used, Chu said. In addition, Taiwan promotes multilingual education, emphasizes the cultural significance of languages and supports the international mother language movement, he said. Taiwan has long participated
Taiwan must invest in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to keep abreast of the next technological leap toward automation, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said at the luanch ceremony of Taiwan AI and Robots Alliance yesterday. The world is on the cusp of a new industrial revolution centered on AI and robotics, which would likely lead to a thorough transformation of human society, she told an event marking the establishment of a national AI and robotics alliance in Taipei. The arrival of the next industrial revolution could be a matter of years, she said. The pace of automation in the global economy can
RSS