Taiwan’s representative to Switzerland on Thursday met with his US counterpart, the latest Taiwanese diplomat to meet a US official after Washington ended its restrictions on official contacts with Taiwan on Jan. 9.
The meeting was revealed on Friday when US Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein Edward McMullen wrote on Twitter that he was delighted to have officially met with Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Switzerland Director David Huang (黃偉峰).
The US and Taiwan share common values of freedom, rule of law and respect for human dignity, McMullen wrote.
Huang on Saturday said that McMullen invited him to meet at the US embassy in Switzerland shortly after the US lifted its ban on official contacts with Taiwan.
During the meeting, Huang said he extended Taiwan’s appreciation to the US for the support it has shown to Taiwan’s government and people.
McMullen said he had brought up issues regarding the decades-old restrictions with the US Department of State and later with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, when he visited Switzerland in 2019.
Huang was not the only Taiwanese representative who met with a US diplomat after the self-imposed ban ended.
On Monday last week, US Ambassador to the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra met Representative to the Netherlands Chen Hsing-hsing (陳欣新) at the US embassy in The Hague.
Pompeo had declared the restrictions on contacts that have been in place since Washington cut ties with Taipei “null and void.”
The guidelines had forbidden Taiwanese diplomats and members of the military from displaying the national flag at US government venues, as well as all symbols of Taiwanese sovereignty from being displayed on US premises, a source familiar with the policy said.
As part of the guidelines, Taiwanese representatives overseas were also not allowed to meet US counterparts at US embassies.
While Taiwan welcomed the lifting of the ban, others have seen the move as a publicity stunt in the waning days of US President Donald Trump’s term to infuriate China and constrict US president-elect Joe Biden’s room to maneuver on China and Taiwan policies.
There is no indication yet whether the Biden administration, which takes over the White House on Wednesday, would uphold the decision.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000