The US House of Representatives on June 28 passed a foreign aid amendment bill barring the US Export-Import Bank from approving US$5 billion loans to build four nuclear power plants in China. The lawmakers introducing such a bill said that at the juncture when the US faces financial difficulties, using taxpayer money to assist China's development in this way is not only unreasonable, but dangerous. The sum of US$5 billion is a lot of money, but there is the prospect of supplying more than US$5 billion in equipment and facilities.
By the standards of Taiwan's pro-unification camp, turning down the loan is missing a great opportunity. They would see the situation as isolated from other events and take the attitude that "if I don't sell the goods or provide the loans, others will."
But the US House of Representatives voted a significant 334-114 margin to pass the amendment bill. These US lawmakers are not driven by ideological thinking, but instead take national security and the rights of all Americans as their top priority. It is only Taiwan's pro-unification lawmakers who insist on classifying "love of country" and "love of Taiwan" in completely ideological terms.
US lawmakers are certainly no fools. They, of course, understand that if they refuse China the money, other countries may lend it to them. But the US attitude is that if other countries lend the money to China, that is their business. The US is not only concerned with business opportunities, but safeguarding US interests and national security is more important than benefiting commercial interests.
On June 30, two days after the US House rejected the US$5 billion in foreign aid to China, it overwhelmingly voted 333-92 for an amendment bill and 398-15 for a non-binding resolution to press President George W. Bush to review the China National Offshore Oil Corp's (CNOOC) US$18.5 billion bid to purchase the US' Unocal Corp.
Representative Richard Pombo, a Republican, said that "Such a move may not be consistent with free market principles or in the best interest of US national security." Although this non-binding resolution expressing the House's position cannot compel the action of the US government, it is important for the two following reasons.
First, the resolution shows the US Congress' "concern for the US economy and security." Is it true that the rise of China has threatened the US economy and security? In fact, given the more than 10,000km between the US and China, China cannot have any substantial or immediate impact on the US economy. Besides, US$1.6 trillion of China's GDP is relatively insignificant compared to US$11.7 trillion of the US' GDP. Thus, there is still a long way for China to go if it wants to catch up with the US.
Despite this, US lawmakers still have to take precautions by giving China's potential threat careful thought in order to carry out their duties of supervising the government.
The other implication of the resolution is to remind the government that China's foreign trade policy does not conform with free-market principles. As a result, China should not be treated the same as other democratic countries while assessing international business takeovers. Not long ago, on April 6, the US Senate voted 67-33 to allow a vote on a bill that would impose a 27.5 percent penalty tariff on Chinese imports if China failed to revalue the yuan within six months.
This Senate resolution similarly revealed that the Chinese government has kept its yuan at an artificially low rate, violating free market principles in order to gain an unfair advantage in the world market.
We see that when faced with the threat from other nations, both the US Senate and House can jointly shoulder the responsibility to protect Americans and safeguard the national interest regardless of business interests.
We hope that the Legislative Yuan can emulate the spirit of the US Congress by making national security a top priority when making laws rather than changing their minds constantly because of "goodwill" gestures.
Further, we hope that our lawmakers can soon pass the draft of the sensitive scientific technology protection bill (
Meanwhile, we call on the Chinese government to revalue the yuan. If they do not, we should follow the US example and pass a law to demand the government take appropriate measures, such as revaluing the NT dollar. If this is done, not only will Taiwan's national security not be compromised, but it might even lead to another wave of Taiwan's economic miracle.
Huang tien-lin is a national policy adviser to the president.
TRANSLATED BY LIN YA-TI
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS