The US told China on Tuesday that it is committed to insisting Taiwan refrain from unilaterally changing the cross-strait "status quo."
The remarks were made in the first high-level face-to-face discussions about Taiwan between the two countries since President Chen Shui-bian's (
Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎) held meetings with US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and Assistant Secretary Christopher Hill in Washington on Tuesday to prepare for a planned summit visit to Washington in late April by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
In the sessions with Yang, "we reiterated the view that Taiwan needs to refrain from taking actions which can be seen as unilateral efforts to change the status quo," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters as the talks were progressing.
The US also told the Chinese that Taiwan "need[s] to move to address the issues they have with respect to China through dialogue, and that's our consistent message in our dealings with the Taiwanese," Ereli said.
That message seemed subtly different to earlier US comments on cross-strait dialogue, in which the US has focused on the need for China to deal with Chen and his government, rather than going through indirect talks with the opposition pan-blue parties.
The meetings came in the wake of reports that Dennis Wilder, the chief Chinese affairs official of the National Security Council, went to Taiwan last week to warn Chen not to abolish the NUC. Ereli and other department officials refused to confirm Wilder's trip.
One department official said only that: "We meet from time to time with Taiwan representatives, but we don't go into details about such meetings."
Ereli refused to discuss the Wilder trip.
"I'm not aware of the specific visit that you mentioned," he said in response to a reporter's question.
In the meetings on Tuesday, the two sides discussed the gamut of US-China issues, a State Department official said.
"As is usually the case when we talk to the Chinese, the Chinese raise Taiwan," the official said. "We don't have any new positions [on Taiwan], so we restate our position."
Ereli refused to speculate on how the US will react if Chen scraps the unification council and guidelines.
"I think we will be guided by our policy, which is based on the Taiwan Relations Act" and the three joint US-China communiques, he said.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration earlier this month launched a major review of its China policy amid feelings by key officials that the stance toward China should be hardened, according to a leading US Taiwan expert.
John Tkacik, a senior fellow of the Washington-based think tank the Heritage Foundation, wrote in an article in the conservative journal Weekly Standard that the first meeting held among mid-level officials on Feb. 3 was "hastily arranged" after Chen's remarks about the NUC.
The "question of the day" at the meeting was: "How does the Taiwan president's stance affect the Taiwan Strait `status quo' in the run-up to the Hu visit?"
The answer was, "Not much," administration officials concluded, according to Tkacik.
Wilder "launched the discussion with a recitation of China's unhelpful behavior in the Taiwan Strait over the past year, and urged a policy of `balance,'" Tkacik said.
While "Taiwan's infant democracy has given fits to the Bush administration ... China's behavior has been egregious," the administration concluded, according to Tkacik.
After a tough patch in US-Taiwan relations, the administration has reached a "new consensus" that on the China-Taiwan issue, "Washington should rebalance its policies back in Taiwan's direction," Tkacik said.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but