US Representative Ro Khanna is leading a congressional delegation to Taiwan this weekend to bolster economic ties as the relationship between Washington and Beijing comes under fresh strain.
Khanna, a California Democrat who represents much of Silicon Valley, is to meet with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co founder Morris Chang (張忠謀), as well as representatives from Alphabet Inc’s Google, Khanna’s office said in a press release.
“A lot of my interest is the economic — the semiconductor, the manufacturing, bringing that back here,” Khanna said in an interview in Santa Clara, California, adding that he plans to affirm the “one China” policy on the trip.
Photo: Reuters
US representatives Tony Gonzales, Jake Auchincloss and Jonathan Jackson are also part of the delegation.
Auchincloss and Khanna are members of the US House of Representatives’ select committee on China.
Khanna said that he began planning the trip before the committee formed, prompted in large part by the CHIPS and Science Act, a US$280 billion investment in semiconductor manufacturing that Khanna helped usher to US President Joe Biden’s desk in the previous Congress.
His visit was in the works before the US military shot down a Chinese balloon that had flown over the continental US, leading US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a visit to Beijing.
Khanna said he intends to visit China this year, at a time that the US Department of State deems appropriate.
“The [China] trip was planned before the incidents, so canceling it would have sent the wrong message,” Khanna said.
The Taiwan trip could be the first of several by members of Congress this year, as House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul said he plans to lead a bipartisan delegation to the nation this spring.
That is likely to occur during the April House recess, a person familiar with the matter said.
US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy has also expressed his intent to visit Taiwan at some point this year or next, while McCaul has said he would be part of the trip.
Asked whether he would join either of those visits, Khanna that this upcoming visit is “what I plan to do.”
“I’ve also very clearly said that I would like to engage China and go to China as well, and I’m not sure if the speaker or McCaul will take that approach,” Khanna said.
The travel plans demonstrate an unflagging continuation of congressional support for Taiwan.
Last year, at least 37 US lawmakers visited, the most in a decade, a Bloomberg tally showed.
Among them was then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose trip touched off a furious response by China, including staged military exercises around Taiwan.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching