The Oregon State Senate on Monday adopted the US state’s first resolution to reaffirm its commitment to its relationship with Taiwan.
The state senate unanimously adopted House Concurrent Resolution 203, which was sponsored by 12 cross-party legislators including state representatives Paul Evans and James Manning, as well as Oregon Senator Aaron Woods.
The resolution was adopted by the Oregon House of Representatives on Feb. 19 before being introduced in the state senate the following day.
Photo: AP
The unanimous consent in the state senate made it the first pro-Taiwan resolution to complete all parliamentary procedures in the Oregon Legislative Assembly since 1995, “an important milestone in Taiwan-Oregon relations,” the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Seattle said in a news release yesterday.
The resolution “honors the ways Oregon and Taiwan have worked together over the years,” it says, adding that the two sides “maintain and cherish a longstanding friendship” since the establishment of a sister-state relationship in 1986.
The US and Taiwan are bonded by shared commitments to democracy, freedom, human rights, the rule of law and the market economy, and the robust trade relations between the two are mutually beneficial, it says.
Taiwan was the eighth-largest trading partner of the US in 2022 and the ninth-largest trading partner of Oregon, with which it trades commodity goods including semiconductor parts, electric machinery, chemicals, optical and medical equipment, and agricultural products, it says.
Portland, Oregon, establishing a sister-city relationship with Kaohsiung in 1988 was another landmark in the relationship between the state and Taiwan, it says.
During the previous hearing on the resolution, Evans and Woods underlined the importance of deepening cooperation with Taiwan to safeguard the nation’s democracy and deter China’s ambition to invade Taiwan.
They also called on local governments and businesses to bolster their ties with Taipei to prevent Beijing from isolating the nation.
The resolution could help safeguard the democratic values in Taiwan and promote bilateral exchanges in politics, economy, education and other fields, the lawmakers said.
It could also urge the state’s executive branch to speed up the establishment of an Oregon office in Taiwan and renew a reciprocal driver’s license agreement between the two sides, they said.
To highlight the importance of the resolution in the relationship between Taiwan and Oregon, the office in Seattle held a forum last month, inviting state legislators and Taiwanese tech entrepreneurs based in Oregon, as well as experts and academics to exchange views on the prospect of the partnership, the office said.
Passing the resolution in the same year of the 45th anniversary of the enactment of the Taiwan Relations Act demonstrated the firm friendship between Taiwan and Oregon, it said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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