Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) yesterday said that a warning by the US’ top commander for the Indo-Pacific region about significantly increased Chinese military aggression toward Taiwan underscores that peace in the Indo-Pacific region is a “core interest” of the US.
Before the start of a legislative plenary session, reporters asked Koo about remarks from US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo that China’s aggressive military actions toward Taiwan have increased 300 percent over the past year.
Closing the Taiwan Strait, one of the world’s major trading channels, could be more devastating than for the world than the Great Depression in the 1930s, Paparo on Thursday last week told the US Senate Committee on Armed Services when asked why Americans should care about protecting Taiwan, US Naval Institute News reported.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
A blockade in the waterway would expose the US’ dependence on Taiwan for semiconductor production, which is essential to modernizing and growing the domestic economy, the report quoted Paparo as saying.
War in the Indo-Pacific region could cause “a 25 percent reduction in GDP in Asia, an effect of 10 to 12 percent GDP reduction in the United States of America, unemployment spiking at 7 to 10 percent” above normal levels, “and 500,000 excess deaths of despair,” he said.
Even a successful US intervention “would halve that impact, so still a grave result” and “a lot of human misery,” he added.
Koo said that Paparo’s remarks were proof that stability and prosperity in the world hinge on stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.
It also showed that maintaining the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait is practically a consensus among countries around the world and something that requires an active effort to maintain.
Koo referenced a leaked Pentagon internal memo as evidence of the US’ commitment to deterring a Chinese annexation of Taiwan.
The memo, leaked during US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s tour of Asia last month, reportedly directed the prioritization of deterring China’s capture of Taiwan while scaling back its support for Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion.
China is the Pentagon’s “sole pacing threat,” and denial of a “Chinese fait accompli seizure” of Taiwan while simultaneously defending the US homeland is its “sole pacing scenario,” the memo reportedly said.
The Executive Yuan yesterday announced that registration for a one-time universal NT$10,000 cash handout to help people in Taiwan survive US tariffs and inflation would start on Nov. 5, with payouts available as early as Nov. 12. Who is eligible for the handout? Registered Taiwanese nationals are eligible, including those born in Taiwan before April 30 next year with a birth certificate. Non-registered nationals with residence permits, foreign permanent residents and foreign spouses of Taiwanese citizens with residence permits also qualify for the handouts. For people who meet the eligibility requirements, but passed away between yesterday and April 30 next year, surviving family members
The German city of Hamburg on Oct. 14 named a bridge “Kaohsiung-Brucke” after the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. The footbridge, formerly known as F566, is to the east of the Speicherstadt, the world’s largest warehouse district, and connects the Dar-es-Salaam-Platz to the Brooktorpromenade near the Port of Hamburg on the Elbe River. Timo Fischer, a Free Democratic Party member of the Hamburg-Mitte District Assembly, in May last year proposed the name change with support from members of the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union. Kaohsiung and Hamburg in 1999 inked a sister city agreement, but despite more than a quarter-century of
Taiwanese officials are courting podcasters and influencers aligned with US President Donald Trump as they grow more worried the US leader could undermine Taiwanese interests in talks with China, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has said Taiwan would likely be on the agenda when he is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) next week in a bid to resolve persistent trade tensions. China has asked the White House to officially declare it “opposes” Taiwanese independence, Bloomberg reported last month, a concession that would mark a major diplomatic win for Beijing. President William Lai (賴清德) and his top officials
‘ONE CHINA’: A statement that Berlin decides its own China policy did not seem to sit well with Beijing, which offered only one meeting with the German official German Minister for Foreign Affairs Johann Wadephul’s trip to China has been canceled, a spokesperson for his ministry said yesterday, amid rising tensions between the two nations, including over Taiwan. Wadephul had planned to address Chinese curbs on rare earths during his visit, but his comments about Berlin deciding on the “design” of its “one China” policy ahead of the trip appear to have rankled China. Asked about Wadephul’s comments, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) said the “one China principle” has “no room for any self-definition.” In the interview published on Thursday, Wadephul said he would urge China to
RSS