Washington has been in talks with Taipei for the past few weeks in preparation for the unveiling of its China strategy yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Communications between the US and Taiwan were “intense” in the run-up to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s speech on China policy at George Washington University, the ministry said.
The contents of those discussions are being kept private, ministry deputy spokesman Tsuei Ching-lin (崔靜麟) said at a news conference.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
Blinken outlined US President Joe Biden administration’s policy toward China at the university at 10am yesterday in Washington.
The speech, which had been postponed from early last month after Blinken tested positive for COVID-19, came on the heels of Biden’s trip to Asia this week, which ended on Tuesday, and was reportedly aimed at reinvigorating relationships with US allies to counter China’s influence in the region.
During Biden’s visit to Japan, he said in response to a reporter’s question that the US would intervene militarily if China were to attack Taiwan.
Biden’s off-the-cuff remark was interpreted by some people as a more open commitment of US intervention, or “strategic clarity,” and a deviation from the US’ policy of “strategic ambiguity,” which allows it to remain vague about its response to a potential attack on Taiwan by China.
However, Biden on Tuesday said that the US policy of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan “has not changed at all,” after he met with his colleagues at the leaders’ summit of the Quad nations, including prime ministers Fumio Kishida of Japan, Anthony Albanese of Australia and Narendra Modi of India.
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
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
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,
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