US Senator Marco Rubio on Tuesday asked US President Joe Biden why Taiwan’s video at the Summit for Democracy was censored and why the nation was underrepresented.
Taiwan was represented by Minister Without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳) and Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) at the summit last week.
However, Tang’s presentation at a panel discussion on “countering digital authoritarianism and affirming democratic values” was on Friday interrupted after it showed a map showing Taiwan in a different color than China.
Photo: Lee Hui-chou, Taipei Times
Washington was concerned about breaking its “one China” policy and complained to Taipei, which was angry that Tang’s presentation had been cut, Reuters reported on Sunday.
“I am deeply disappointed by how your administration handled Taiwan’s participation,” Rubio wrote in the open letter to Biden, asking why President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was not invited to the summit.
“While both of these officials [Tang and Hsiao] are highly accomplished and impressive in their own right, neither of them was elected to the position that they currently occupy, and most importantly, the other nations at the summit were represented by their heads of state,” he wrote.
“Unlike United Nations organizations in which the United States cannot unilaterally decide whether Taiwan is allowed to participate, you had carte blanche to determine which countries participated in the summit, and at what level,” he added.
“Decades of a failed engagement policy should have taught us by now that making concessions to Beijing is a one-sided and fruitless endeavor. And yet it continues,” Rubio wrote.
“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) never reciprocates such concessions,” he added.
“According to widely available press reports, White House officials cut off the transmission of Minister Tang’s video while she was presenting because Tang had a map that displayed China and Taiwan in different colors. If true, this is yet another concession to the CCP,” he said.
Rubio urged the White House to correct the mistake and prove at next year’s edition of the event that “democracy will not be calibrated in the futile pursuit of the approval of our authoritarian rivals.”
In Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said it has no further comment on the matter.
The interruption was due to technical problems on the US side, and Tang’s full presentation was available on the US Department of State’s Web site, the ministry said on Monday.
Taiwan and the US had communicated about her presentation before the summit, and the problem was immediately tackled and her video made available online, Tang said yesterday on the sidelines of an event in Kaohsiung.
Tang said she had provided her manuscript in English and Chinese to US officials before the meeting, and that her voice could be heard reading the Chinese version in the uploaded file.
Additional reporting by CNA
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