The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan.
The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said.
The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult with China on arms sales to Taiwan, mediate between either side, revise the Taiwan Relations Act, change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty or pressure Taiwan to negotiate the issues with China.
Photo: Taipei Times
AIT officials appointed by the administration of former US president Joe Biden are inappropriately continuing the “cliches” of the previous administration and “manipulating” UN Resolution 2758, Hsiao said, asking AIT Director Raymond Greene whether he solicited US President Donald Trump’s opinion before making the remarks, or what Trump would think about his “reckless actions” that increase cross-strait tensions.
It does not seem to be Trump’s intention for Biden-appointed officials to continue the previous administration’s policies of manipulating Taiwan’s legal status, or acting in ways contrary to the interests and security of Taiwanese, he said.
If the AIT continues to backslide into the stance that Taiwan has an indeterminate legal status, the US would be changing the “six assurances” in a way that could undermine the already fraught cross-strait relationship, he said.
Reliance on the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco by those who advocate Taiwanese independence to justify claims that Taiwan has an indeterminate legal status is contrary to the Constitution and the historical fact that Japan returned Taiwan proper, as well as the Kinmen and Penghu archipelagos to the Republic of China, he said.
The 1943 Cairo Declaration, the 1945 Potsdam Declaration and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender are legally binding documents in the eyes of international law, Hsiao said, adding that the legal effect of the documents have never been questioned by the parties named in them.
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
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
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
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