The UK should “establish full diplomatic relations” with Taiwan to signal to Beijing that its territorial ambitions or an attempt to overturn the rules-based international order would not be tolerated, UK House of Lords member Frances D’Souza said on Tuesday last week.
D’Souza made the call via teleconference at a panel jointly held by the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents’ Club and National Taiwan University in Taipei.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the UK has become alert to the danger China poses to the Indo-Pacific region, she said.
Photo: screen grab from the Presidential Office’s Web site
The next British government — to be formed after a general election anticipated sometime late this year — is urged to check Beijing by taking measures including publicly condemning “gray zone” tactics and sanctioning Chinese officials, she said, adding that London is advised to decrease the number of Chinese students, ban imports of technologies that could be exploited for spying and recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty.
While the UK establishing formal ties with Taiwan would almost certainly anger Beijing, it would also send a clear message to the world that Taiwan is becoming a de jure state from de facto independence, D’Souza said.
Beijing’s embrace of Sinocentrism in internal and external policies is motivated by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) belief that the international order is biased against China, she said.
This means restructuring the global order, which Xi sees as a mistake of history, to one that puts Chinese interests and values above the rest of the world, she added.
Xi has already formulated an ideology that he would compel the international to accept and set development goals for the next 10 years to enable China to expand its influence in the Indo-Pacific region and throughout the globe, D’Souza said.
China’s short-term goals are achieving stronger ties with Russia and North Korea, and obtaining a leadership role in the UN, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, ASEAN and other international forums, she said.
Beijing intends to seize the US’ role in leading the global system by using its economic and military power to command maritime routes, enabling China to influence and control world trade, D’Souza said.
This strategy is aimed at exerting pressure on surrounding nations and obtaining long-term leases for the use of strategically valuable territory, she said, citing the port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka as an example of the latter.
The global community’s message to Beijing must be that the world would not let China forcefully take territories, bully other nations or overturn the existing rules-based international order toward achieving its ambitions, D’Souza said.
Beijing must be warned that persisting on its current path would lead to severe consequences, and that a war between China and the West would be catastrophic for it and the world, D’Souza added.
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The Taipei Department of Health’s latest inspection of fresh fruit and vegetables sold in local markets revealed a 25 percent failure rate, with most contraventions involving excessive pesticide residues, while two durians were also found to contain heavy metal cadmium at levels exceeding safety limits. Health Food and Drug Division Director Lin Kuan-chen (林冠蓁) yesterday said the agency routinely conducts inspections of fresh produce sold at traditional markets, supermarkets, hypermarkets, retail outlets and restaurants, testing for pesticide residues and other harmful substances. In its most recent inspection, conducted in May, the department randomly collected 52 samples from various locations, with testing showing
Taipei and other northern cities are to host air-raid drills from 1:30pm to 2pm tomorrow as part of urban resilience drills held alongside the Han Kuang exercises, Taiwan’s largest annual military exercises. Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung, Taoyuan, Yilan County, Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County are to hold the annual Wanan air defense exercise tomorrow, following similar drills held in central and southern Taiwan yesterday and today respectively. The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) and Maokong Gondola are to run as usual, although stations and passenger parking lots would have an “entry only, no exit” policy once air raid sirens sound, Taipei
Taiwan is bracing for a political shake-up as a majority of directly elected lawmakers from the main opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) face the prospect of early removal from office in an unprecedented wave of recall votes slated for July 26 and Aug. 23. The outcome of the public votes targeting 26 KMT lawmakers in the next two months — and potentially five more at later dates — could upend the power structure in the legislature, where the KMT and the smaller Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) currently hold a combined majority. After denying direct involvement in the recall campaigns for months, the
RSS