The US has welcomed president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) commitment to maintaining the “status quo,” American Institute in Taiwan Chair Laura Rosenberger said on Friday in an online interview with a US think tank.
Relations with the incoming administration were in good shape, Rosenberger said to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, which held the virtual event to mark the 45th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA).
“I’ve had the opportunity twice in two trips since the elections to engage with president-elect Lai and members of his team, to make sure again that we are in a solid place to continue the work going forward,” she said, referring to visits she made in January and this month.
Photo: CNA
“He’s been really clear in terms of his policy priorities, including his commitment to maintaining the status quo, which we, of course, very much welcome,” Rosenberger said on her conversations with Lai.
The TRA was signed into law on April 10, 1979, by then-US president Jimmy Carter after it was enacted by the US Congress a month earlier, in response to the US breaking off diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
“The TRA to my mind has provided a foundation for really everything we are doing to broaden and deepen the relationship,” she said, praising it as “a very insightful and prescient piece of legislation.”
Rosenberger said the TRA was not only about commitments to ensure Taiwan maintains sufficient self-defense capacity, but also “that the US should maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion.”
“I think that’s an important commitment. And you see the US continuing to do work, both ourselves and with allies and partners in the region, to reinforce deterrence in the Indo-Pacific to maintain that critical peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” she said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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