US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reiterated that the US government’s long-standing security commitment to Taiwan is based on the Taiwan Relations Act and the “six assurances,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday following concerns over Washington’s policy shift toward Ukraine and its possible implications for Taiwan.
The ministry’s North American Affairs Department Director-General Wang Liang-yu (王良玉) made the remark in response to media queries at the ministry’s weekly news conference.
“The US government, from administration to administration, has consistently reiterated its security commitment to Taiwan based on the Taiwan Relation Act and the six assurances,” Wang said.
Photo: Screen grab from a Ministry of Foreign Affairs livestream
The US’ long-standing position toward Taiwan has also been reiterated by Rubio, she added.
Rubio, in an interview on Thursday last week, reaffirmed Washington’s opposition to any forced change to the “status quo” across the Taiwan Strait and said that the US remains committed to its long-standing policies on Taiwan.
Since US President Donald Trump took office, his administration has — through the joint statements of a US-Japan meeting and a US-Japan-South Korea foreign ministers’ meeting — emphasized “the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as an indispensable element of security and prosperity for the international community,” Wang said.
They have also expressed “opposition to any attempts to unilaterally force or coerce changes to the status quo,” as well as their “support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations,” she said.
The ministry and government agencies would continue to promote Taiwan-US relations and demonstrate Taiwan’s self-defense determination, as well as strengthen the nation’s self-defense capability to achieve the goal of “peace through strength,” she said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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