US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Jesse Helms said Thursday that passage of the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act (TSEA) will be one of his committee's top priorities in this year's congressional session.
Outlining his priorities in a speech to a conservative think tank in Washington, Helms blasted outgoing President Bill Clinton for having "repeatedly let down our friends in Taiwan" by going to China and enunciating his so-called "three no's" policy while there, and by failing to supply Taipei with sufficient arms under the Taiwan Relations Act.
"The military balance of power of the past 20 years is quickly shifting in Beijing's favor, and we've got to stop it," he said. "It is imperative that we act quickly [to reverse that trend]," Helms told the American Enterprise Institute.
Beijing "must be made to understand that its avenues to destructive behavior are closed off, and that Taiwan will have the means to defend itself, and we're going to make sure that's done," he said.
Claiming that president-elect George W. Bush during his election campaign "gave his enthusiastic endorsement" to the TSEA, Helms said he intends to work with Bush to enact the measure.
The extent of Bush's backing for TSEA was not clear. While the president-elect's Web site contains statements supporting the legislation, observers could not immediately recall whether Bush voiced support for the measure during the campaign, which quite noticeably sidestepped China as an election issue.
The Republican Party platform, while endorsing greater efforts for Taiwan's security, did not specifically mention the TSEA. Nor was it clear what sort of act Helms would support.
Last year, he introduced a bill that would strengthen direct military ties between the US and Taiwan and called for the Clinton administration to supply Taiwan with a number of specific weapons systems that it had refused to sell.
These included destroyers equipped with the AEGIS anti-missile radar system and diesel submarines.
That bill ran into substantial opposition both in the Senate and from the Clinton administration, and it never made it out of Helms' committee.
A scaled-down version, without the specific weapons systems and calling for a less extensive military relationship, was approved by the House, but died in the Senate.
While Helms, in his speech, appeared to seek an early introduction of a new bill, many observers feel that the Senate would rather hold off introduction of the legislation to give the lawmakers and the administration time to first work on less controversial measures.
Meanwhile, the US State Department's top Asia policymaker has expressed serious concerns over the course of cross-strait relations, citing misunderstandings on both sides, and saying both Taipei and Beijing must alter their positions to allow talks to resume.
"I am worried about the prospects for cross-strait relations," Stanley Roth, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told a breakfast meeting of the Asia Society in Washington.
"The reason I am worried is because I believe neither side fundamentally understands the other."
Roth faulted Beijing for continuing to view the DPP in terms of its traditional pro-independence policies and trying to avoid dealing with the party by adopting a "very clumsy" united front approach.
If progress is to be made, he said, Beijing "has no choice but to deal with the current authorities in Taiwan, and to undertake any initiatives directly with them, not around them."
Roth also slammed Taipei for its misperceptions of Beijing's thinking. "It isn't clear to me that the new government in Taiwan fully understands the sensitivities of the cross-strait issues on the mainland side," he said. "There is still a tendency to believe that economic issues can outweigh political issues."
The Chen government sees the opening of the "small three links" as a "trial balloon" for the three big links of full trade, postal and transportation exchanges, he noted. But this "seems to ignore the fact that the mainland is unlikely to play this game until it has persuaded itself that Taiwan is willing to abide by what Beijing calls the `one China' principle."
Roth described recent statements by Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen (錢其琛) as "positive developments," saying they "certainly leave room for compromise."
Qian has repeated several times since early last year that both Taiwan and the mainland are parts of China.
Despite this, "it isn't clear to me that either side is actually prepared at this moment to engage and to reach agreement to resume cross-strait dialogue based on this formula," Roth said.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so