Staff Writer, with CNA, Washington
Taiwan is fully committed to upholding both its defense and democratic ideals in the face of a military threat from China, a Taiwanese official in the US said yesterday.
Director of the Press Division at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office Eddy Tsai said the stability and security that the US brings to the Asia-Pacific region by selling arms to its allies and by taking a firm stand for freedom sends a message not only to China, but also to others who question the US' resolve to stand up for democracy overseas.
PHOTO: AFP
"Suggesting that it may be better to abandon Taiwan's 23 million citizens to the tender mercies of Beijing serves only to dilute this message and increases the chances of miscalculation," Tsai argued in a letter to the editor printed in the Wall Street Journal.
The letter, titled "Three Myths About Taiwan's Defense," was a response to an April 23 article titled "Taiwan's Free Ride on US Defense," written by Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Carpenter claimed that the Taiwan legislature's reluctance to pass a special budget for arms procurement from the US "leaves America in the unenviable position of having an implicit commitment to defend a fellow democracy that doesn't seem especially interested in defending itself."
Tsai said that Carpenter's argument was based on three "regrettable myths" about Taiwan's defense situation, namely that Taiwan's defense investment continues to shrink as China's rises, that Taiwan seems intent on starting a war with China through provocative policies, and that the long-stalled arms package would have been passed by now if Taiwan were still an authoritarian party-state.
He noted that Taiwan's defense budget will increase from 2.2 percent of its GDP last year to a proposed 2.85 percent this year and to 3 percent next year.
Citing a report released last year by the US Congressional Research Service, Tsai said Taiwan received US$13.9 billion in arms deliveries from various sources between 1998 and 2005, making it the third largest such recipient among developing countries.
Also, much of Taiwan's defense budget has been spent on expensive military software that often costs even more than missile hardware the country purchases, Tsai said.
Concerning Taiwan's "provocative" cross-strait policies, Tsai said that Taiwan had tried to reach out to China with initiatives such as a proposed demilitarized zone along the middle of the Taiwan Strait, confidence-building measures to avoid miscalculation, and direct charter flights.
He said the standoff over the procurement bill was testimony to the commitment to democracy: "Long gone are the days when an authoritarian government in Taipei could pass laws by executive fiat regardless of political opposition."
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
RSS