Nine members of the US Congress sent a joint letter to US President George W. Bush yesterday calling for an end to the US' "one China" policy.
Led by House Foreign Affairs Committee member Representative Gus Bilirakis, the letter asked Bush to end the "one China" policy, which the letter described as a vestige of the Cold War and liable to send China the wrong signals regarding the Taiwan situation.
The representatives -- almost all Republicans -- said that because the "one China" policy implies that Taiwan is part of China, it undermines the legitimacy of the US policy of providing defensive weapons to Taiwan and also gives China an opportunity to control strategic regional waters.
Representatives
Representatives Gus Bilirakis, Tom Tancredo, Chair of the House Republican Policy Committee Thaddeus McCotter, Steve Chabot, Scott Garrett, Dana Rohrabacher, John Culberson, Mark Souder and Collin Peterson said that the assumption that Taiwan is part of China "seriously undermines the legitimacy of our provision to sell Taiwan defensive weapons. It also ignores the fact that Taiwan has made an impressive transformation from authoritarianism to democracy over the past twenty years."
China's refusal last year to grant US ships access to Hong Kong harbor under bad weather conditions, they said, was retribution for the US' security commitment to Taiwan and the decision to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama.
This was a "transgression of international maritime practice and ... raises serious questions about China's commitment to international norms," the letter said.
Peace
"It is clear that it is not the `One China' policy that has kept the peace in the western Pacific. Rather, it has been our commitment to Taiwan's security under the Taiwan Relations Act," it said.
The US is abiding by a policy first implemented in the 1970s in the 21st century, they said.
"Unless our outdated policy vis-a-vis the PRC [People's Republic of China] and Taiwan is modernized, the United States should expect tensions in the region to continue rising," the letter said.
The letter ends by calling upon the US to "set a good example" and to "support democracy in Taiwan."
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
RSS