President William Lai (賴清德) discussed Taiwan’s position and strategies to strengthen the global defense of democracy, economic security and supply chain resilience in a video address to be shown at the Concordia Annual Summit in New York.
The speech, titled “Better Together for a Safer World — Taiwan’s Role in the Age of Uncertainty,” focuses on Lai’s touchstone policies, including values-based diplomacy, whole-of-society defense resilience and supply chain resilience, the Presidential Office said.
The speech is to be streamed at the event at 9am Taipei time today.
Photo: Screen grab from the Presidential Office’s Web site
Lai began his speech by saying that Aug. 15 marked 80 years since the end of World War II, a conflict that taught the world “aggression fails, unity prevails.”
“Taiwan stands on the front line of the first island chain in the Indo-Pacific and directly faces the threat of authoritarianism,” he said, describing the global landscape as “volatile.”
“Taiwan has long faced military intimidation, information warfare and other compound threats from China,” he said. “Democratic partnerships [are] the sole path to maintaining lasting peace, and building a stable and prosperous world.”
“Taiwan will continue to be a pilot for world peace and a force for global prosperity,” he added.
Lai outlined three key strategies under his administration.
First, values-based diplomacy would allow Taiwan to work closely with like-minded countries on the foundation of respect for human rights and rule of law, he said.
Despite its exclusion from the UN, Taiwan has consistently proven that it is a reliable global partner under the slogan “Taiwan Can Help,” Lai said.
Second, Taiwan would continue to bolster supply chain resilience as a key player in the global semiconductor supply chain, leveraging advantages in chip manufacturing and end-to-end industrial clusters, he said.
Third, Taiwan has been working to enhance its national defense capabilities through his whole-of-society defense and resilience initiative, and plans to achieve defense spending of 3 percent of GDP by next year and 5 percent by 2030, to align with NATO standards, Lai said.
Taiwan is “advancing cybersecurity, combating disinformation and enhancing our citizens’ media literacy,” he added.
“We firmly believe that there is strength in unity, and that we can achieve a bright future only by working together,” Lai said in his concluding remarks.
The New York-based non-profit organization Concordia hosts the “largest and most inclusive nonpartisan forum alongside the UN General Assembly,” discussing topics such as global economy and trade, democracy, security, and geopolitical risks, according to program information.
Additional reporting by CNA
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake yesterday struck off the coast of Hualien, causing brief transportation disruptions in northern and eastern Taiwan, as authorities said that aftershocks of magnitude 5 or higher could occur over the next three days. The quake, which hit at 7:24pm at a depth of 24.5km, registered an intensity of 4 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. In Taipei, the MRT railway’s operations control center received an earthquake alert and initiated standard safety procedures, briefly halting trains on the Bannan (blue) line for about a minute.
RSS