Taiwan is to continue working with the US to ensure peace in the Taiwan Strait, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday after the US House of Representatives approved a US$95 billion foreign aid package with funding for Taiwan.
The bills were passed with bipartisan support in a rare Saturday session after votes had been delayed for months by House Republicans.
After clearing the House, the bills — containing US$8 billion for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region, along with US$60.8 billion for Kyiv, and US$26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones — would be combined into a single piece of legislation that the US Senate is expected to pass tomorrow.
Photo: AFP
US President Joe Biden said in a statement that the package “comes at a moment of grave urgency” and has promised to sign it into law immediately.
The supplemental defense funding was originally passed by the US Senate as a single bill in February, but has remained stalled in the Republican-led lower chamber.
US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson split the Senate’s proposal into three separate bills in the hopes of circumventing far-right Republicans who opposed extending further funds to Ukraine.
The Indo-Pacific bill containing provisions on Taiwan passed 385-34, while the Ukraine bill passed 311-112 and the Israel bill passed 366-58.
In Taipei, the government thanked the House for approving the foreign aid.
Under the legislation, US$2 billion in Foreign Military Financing Program funds would go to Taiwan and other US regional security partners to counter Chinese aggression, while US$1.9 billion would go to replenishing defense articles and defense services provided to Taiwan and regional partners, it said.
The bills not only showed that the US is committed to maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, but also that the US security commitment to Taiwan is a bipartisan consensus, Presidential Office spokesperson Olivia Lin (林聿禪) said.
As a responsible member of the Indo-Pacific region and the international community, Taiwan would continue to work with the US and other like-minded countries to protect democracy and freedom, defend the rules-based international order and safeguard regional peace, stability and prosperity, she added.
The defense ministry expressed the military’s gratitude for the pledged funding to support the country’s defense, even amid the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and the Russian-Ukraine war.
The ministry said it would coordinate the use of the funds with the US through existing exchange mechanisms, and work to enhance combat readiness capabilities to ensure national security and peace and stability in the Strait.
Taiwan has since 2022 complained of delays in deliveries of US weapons such as Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, as manufacturers focused on supplying Ukraine to help it battle invading Russian forces.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs thanked the House for passing the defense funding, which it said once again reaffirmed Washington’s “rock-solid” commitment to helping Taiwan defend itself, as both sides this month commemorate the 45th anniversary of the passage of the US’ Taiwan Relations Act.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) also expressed gratitude to the US, but lamented that it was a defense issue that has brought the world’s attention to Taiwan.
He said he hopes that with the country’s economic development and tourism, the world can see the nation as a place with good food and good fun, rather than a dangerous destination.
The Formosan Association for Public Affairs, a Washington-based organization of Taiwanese Americans, applauded the passage of the legislation.
Association executive director Anny Hsiao (蕭喬勻) in a statement on Saturday thanked the House “for their willingness to invest in the US’ own capabilities to ensure peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” adding that for Taiwanese Americans, “it is critical that Taiwan remains free, sovereign and independent.”
Additional reporting by Chen I-shao
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has