The Presidential Office yesterday criticized the Chinese-language United Daily News after it reported that US Senator Lindsey Graham had a business agenda when he visited Taiwan in the middle of this month.
The newspaper yesterday reported that Graham, the ranking member of the US Senate Budget Committee, was “forcefully” trying to convince the government to buy commercial airplanes made by US-based Boeing Co.
Graham led a congressional delegation to Taiwan on April 14 and 15, during which he met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and other top government officials.
Photo: AP, courtesy of the Presidential Office
The report was based on two public statements by Graham.
During the delegation’s meeting with Tsai at the Presidential Office in Taipei on April 15, Graham said he hoped Taiwan would buy Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner jets.
The senator from South Carolina relayed this message again in a statement on Friday last week, saying: “I’m hoping in the coming weeks that Taiwan will announce that they’re going to buy 24 787 wide-body jets made by Boeing.”
“That would be a US$8 billion package,” he said. “It would be a tremendous boost to Boeing in South Carolina, and I’m hoping Taiwan will make that decision.”
Presidential Office spokesman Xavier Chang (張惇涵) yesterday said that the article did nothing good for Taiwan’s relationship with the US.
Separately, Department of North American Affairs Director-General Douglas Hsu (徐佑典) said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “deeply regrets” the report, as it distorted the senator’s comments and harmed Taiwan’s relationship with the US.
Graham’s remarks should be seen in the context of an elected representative seeking the best for his constituents, which is entirely normal in democracies, Hsu said.
The government applies a rigorous vetting process to foreign companies that intend to do business in Taiwan to protect the nation’s interests and the local economy, he said.
Taiwan and the US are close partners in matters of trade, and bilateral exchanges on goods and investments are important to the prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region, he said.
“The ministry calls on certain media firms to display the professionalism they are expected to have and to provide the public with factually correct information, instead of deliberately spreading untrue stories,” Hsu said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) said the reason for the delegation’s visit to Taiwan was to improve the nation’s security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not to generate business for Boeing.
Lawmakers such as Graham should not be slammed for supporting their constituents’ livelihoods, just as Taiwanese lawmakers should not be criticized when they promote locally made products while abroad, Wang said.
“It would be absurd if [foreign] media reported that our lawmakers were forcing pineapples on their country,” he said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of