The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has planned a series of seminars for next month in four special municipalities on bolstering Taiwan’s national security, a party official said yesterday.
The first would be held on Thursday in Taipei, said Wu Jun-zhi (吳峻鋕), head of the DPP’s China affairs department.
With Beijing’s increasing influence worldwide, the competition between the US and China, and Taiwan’s geostrategic importance to the top two powers in the Asia-Pacific region, Taiwan’s national security can be guaranteed only by improving its national strength, Wu said.
The department has organized the seminars under the theme of “Strengthen Taiwan, the country will be safe,” to convey the party’s ideas and views on the nation’s national security and to gather public opinion on the topic, Wu said.
The Taipei forum would focus on US-China-Taiwan relations, while the forum in Taichung on Dec. 18 would focus on national defense and security, the one in Tainan on Dec. 20 would focus on the situation in Hong Kong, and the one in Kaohsiung on Dec. 26 would focus on Taiwan’s economy, he said.
In other developments, sources yesterday said that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is to take part virtually in three events hosted by three Washington-based think tanks.
Tsai is scheduled to participate in an event on Thursday hosted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, and to deliver speeches at the National Democratic Institute’s annual meeting on Tuesday next week, and at the Hudson Institute’s year-end celebration the following day, they said.
In her speeches, Tsai is to focus on three points, the sources said.
The first point is that Taiwan upholds freedom and democracy in the face of any challenge, a value it shares with the US, they said.
The second point is the challenges the international community faces, including the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic and supply chain restructuring, the sources said.
The third point is that international cooperation is even more important with regard to those challenges, they said.
Additional reporting by Yang Chun-hui
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