Taiwan is a model for Asia and more specifically for China, a former US secretary of defense said during a keynote speech in Taipei yesterday, calling on Washington to sign a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan.
In Taiwan to attend the Republic of China centenary celebrations, former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld was invited by the Prospect Foundation, a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-affiliated think tank, to share his views on future challenges in Asia.
The sprightly 79-year-old, who stepped down as former US president George W. Bush’s defense chief in 2006, said the US supported a peaceful resolution to differences across the Taiwan Strait and that progress in that direction in recent years was welcome.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
“A stable and secure relationship between Taiwan and the mainland [China] is good for both parties, for the region and for the US,” said the career government official, who first visited Taiwan in 1969.
Despite those developments, Rumsfeld said, progress was likely to continue only if both parties recognized that armed conflict was an unacceptable option, which meant Taiwan should maintain its defense and expand ties with regional allies.
“It also means that the US should continue its policy of support to Taiwan for the Taiwanese people to have the confidence to negotiate and improve” relations with China, he said, adding that in the international system, weakness was often perceived as an opportunity on the part of the stronger party to act rashly.
Rumsfeld said the decision by US President Barack Obama’s administration last month to upgrade Taiwan’s F-16A/B aircraft was a manifestation of US responsibility under the Taiwan Relations Act and former president Ronald Reagan’s “Six Assurances.”
He also said that in his view, efforts by Taiwan to procure more advanced F-16C/Ds were still alive and that the US should continue to encourage Taipei to identify its military requirements and make those known to Washington.
Only by ensuring that Taiwan is strong enough would it be possible for Taiwan’s 23 million people to decide their future, he said.
Pointing to the “dynamism” and “resilience” that prevails in Asia amid turbulence in the global economic system, Rumsfeld said the US, which conducts trade of about US$2 trillion in goods and services with Asia annually, should push for a region-wide FTA that includes Taiwan, Japan, Australia and India, among others.
As Washington puts its fiscal house in order, he said, the US “should not — and will not — be merely a spectator in the Pacific region. The promise and potential of Asia are such that future American administrations will unquestionably make the Pacific a strong focus of our foreign policy.”
Turning to China, Rumsfeld said that while some people tended to project the emergence of a “40-feet-tall giant” with whom a clash was inevitable at some point, conflict was not inevitable and was “very unlikely,” adding that China’s rise also faced a number of serious challenges, such as a rapidly aging society, an economy that remained in the thralls of the central government and lack of political freedom.
He also cautioned the Obama administration against starting a trade war with China.
“America needs to resist the current bipartisan proposal that would erect trade barriers and tariffs against China and risk sparking a worldwide trade war — the last thing the global economy needs ever, let alone now.”
While progress has been made in turning China into a responsible stakeholder, Beijing continued on occasion to act in a manner that was detrimental to rapprochement, Rumsfeld said, mentioning the overt collision by Chinese warplanes with a US EP-3 surveillance plane in 2001 and its continued support for Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
He also pointed to the expansion of China’s navy, its missile buildup threatening Taiwan and the use of cyberattacks against the US government.
Asked if he believed the US should worry about Taiwan becoming “over-reliant” on China or be absorbed by it, Rumsfeld said such fears would be overblown.
“People in authoritarian systems ought to fear open societies more than the other way around,” he said. “Closer ties will be a good thing for Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China — and not in the way that it [the Chinese leadership] thinks.”
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
RSS