President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said his remark that Taiwan would “never” ask the US to fight for Taiwan in a war was made because he was confident there would be no war in the Taiwan Strait during his presidency.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) quoted Ma, who doubles as KMT chairman, as saying after the party’s closed-door Central Standing Committee meeting yesterday that he sought to turn Taiwan from a “troublemaker” to a peacemaker.
“The President has the utmost confidence in peace across the Taiwan Strait and believes that there will not be war while he is in office,” Su said. “If there is no war in the Taiwan Strait, we definitely will not ask the US to fight for Taiwan.”
PHOTO: CNA
Ma caused a stir when he said Taiwan would “never ask the Americans to fight for Taiwan” during an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last week. Ma said in the interview that the risk for the US was at its lowest in 60 years, which he credited to his administration’s efforts to improve cross-strait relations.
Su yesterday said the Ma administration would continue to procure arms from the US to protect the country’s security and to manifest its resolve to defend itself.
“We will not let our guard down and will remain prepared against war despite cross-strait detente,” Su quoted Ma as saying.
Su said Ma also said that the reason he spoke English during the interview was because translation would have taken up too much of the interview time.
Meanwhile, the Washington-based Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) criticized Ma for what it said was inviting “aggression” from China.
The group said it was “deeply concerned” about the “never” remarks made by Ma during the CNN interview.
FAPA president Bob Yang (楊英育) said Ma’s remarks were totally at odds with the basic US policy of strategic ambiguity.
Under the policy, China is meant to be left guessing at how the US would respond to an attack on Taiwan. That uncertainty was designed to act as a strong deterrent against provocative action.
“Ma’s remarks leave China with the impression that this ambiguity is removed, thereby undermining the deterrence provided by the US presence in the region,” Yang said.
In a prepared statement, Yang said: “We are clearly in favor of a peaceful resolution, but that can only be achieved if Taiwan shows the resolve to defend itself. The statement made by Ma actually invites aggression from China, which has been threatening Taiwan’s free and democratic existence for many years.
“It amounts to pre-emptive surrender by the Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang [KMT] government in Taiwan,” he said.
Yang said Ma’s remarks “fly in the face” of US commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act, which commits the US to maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security or the social or economic system of Taiwan.
FAPA, a US-wide organization with substantial support in the Taiwanese community, believes that it is essential for Ma to issue a clarification and to state that his administration “adheres to the basic policies on which the strong relations with the US are based.”
Yang also called on Ma to “refrain from making any moves which undermine Taiwan’s freedom, democracy and independence.”
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS