The US should help Taiwan boost its defense capability to prevent China from launching an invasion, US Senator Marco Rubio said on Wednesday amid rising military coercion by Beijing toward Taipei.
Speaking during a Hudson Institute event at which he shared his views on US foreign policy and world affairs, the Republican senator and vocal critic of China’s human rights record said that he believes Beijing will eventually use force to take over Taiwan when asked by the event’s host if Taiwan might become a “flashpoint in US-China relations.”
The number of people in Taiwan and the US who oppose being linked to China has risen in the past few years, Rubio said.
Photo: AFP
Since last month, Washington has sent two senior officials to Taipei, Rubio said, referring to visits by US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and US Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment Keith Krach.
At the same time China has been sending warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone “as a messaging exercise,” Rubio said.
“I do believe that eventually it is a red-line issue for China, and eventually, if necessary, they will move by force to exert their claims on Taiwan,” he said. “The only thing that would prevent that from happening is if the cost of doing that is too high.”
Helping Taiwan to win an all-out conflict against China would not be a way to reach that goal, he said, adding: “That’s not possible.”
Instead, Washington should assist Taipei “to have the capability to raise the cost of military adventurism there to a level that China’s not willing to pay, and navigate that very carefully in an effort not to try to trigger a conflict like that from happening,” he said.
This would be “the best hope that we have” to manage the situation, he said, adding that the path would be a “challenging and tricky one.”
The US should navigate carefully and not be overly provocative, as this could invite Chinese action in the next decade, Rubio said.
The Chinese military has continued to increase the frequency and level of its military coercion toward Taiwan.
On Wednesday, two Chinese Y-8 anti-submarine airplanes entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, the sixth intrusion of its kind in eight days since Wednesday last week.
Also on Wednesday, in a speech to state lawmakers in Wisconsin, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized China’s attempts to exercise influence on the US government and its politics.
In a speech at the Wisconsin State Capitol, Pompeo said that the US has watched the Chinese Communist Party lobby state-level officials and local interests.
“They have been in full swing for years and they’re increasing in intensity,” he said.
“Much of that activity revolves around pressing state governments not to recognize, trade with, or otherwise engage with Taiwan,” he said, without elaborating.
Separately, former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten urged the international community to allow Taiwan to attend next year’s World Health Assembly (WHA), the decisionmaking body of the WHO, as an observer.
During a meeting with Hoover Institution director Condoleezza Rice, Patten said that the world would fare better in the fight against COVID-19 if China could curb the pandemic as successfully as Taiwan, which has demonstrated medical professionalism in containing the virus.
Supporting Taiwan to join the WHA is not about breaking the so-called “one China” policy, he said, adding that the world should push China to treat Taiwan in a more civilized manner.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS