The heads of three major US banks on Wednesday pledged that they would withdraw from the Chinese market if Washington imposed sanctions on Beijing in response to an invasion of Taiwan.
JP Morgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, Bank of America chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan and Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser told lawmakers at a hearing of the US House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services in Washington that the three banks would follow the guidance of the US government to exit China if necessary.
The three bankers made the pledge after US Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer asked the three if they would pull their investments out of China should the Chinese Communist Party follow through on its threat to invade Taiwan.
Photo: AFP
The US lawmaker spoke of Beijing’s continual threats toward Taiwan and its military exercises around Taiwan last month.
Citing the military actions of Russia against Ukraine, Luetkemeyer said there was a great risk in investing in “volatile nations with dictatorial governments” as financial institutions have played a significant role in supporting these regimes’ economies.
Moynihan said Bank of America had followed the government’s guidance to “work with China” in the past few decades, but if the US position changed, “we’ll immediately change it as we did in Russia.”
Dimon and Fraser agreed with Moynihan’s comments on following the government’s lead.
“We very much hope it doesn’t happen,” Fraser added.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the security situation across the Taiwan Strait has drawn increasing interest in the international community.
Fears over a possible invasion of Taiwan have been growing, in particular after US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a 19-hour visit to Taipei early last month, which China strongly opposed.
Pelosi’s visit prompted China to launch several days of large-scale military exercises around Taiwan.
In a prerecorded interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes program that aired on Sunday, US President Joe Biden told host Scott Pelley that the US would defend Taiwan “if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.”
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS