In a speech at a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Republican US presidential hopeful Rick Perry said he would make Taiwan his first international stop if he were elected US president next year, and specifically named Taiwan as an “ally in the region,” the ThinkProgress Security Web site reported.
Perry’s remarks came amid various claims from other Republican presidential hopefuls making attacks on the foreign policies of US President Barack Obama’s administration.
Taiwan has asked to purchase F-16C/D aircraft to modernize its aging fleet of fighters, but the Obama administration has said “no, we’re going to give you the old equipment, we’re not going to give you the newest equipment,” Perry said, adding that even though the offers “are [US] dollars that would be going to American manufacturers ... in Fort Worth, where the F-16s are built,” the Obama administration refused to sell the F-16s to both Taiwan and India.
Taipei has for years asked Washington for 66 F-16C/Ds, but despite pressure from both the US Congress and persistent lobbying by Taiwan, the Obama administration officially declined to release them in late September, offering instead to upgrade Taiwan’s current fleet of 145 F-16A/Bs.
TECH SECTOR: Nvidia Corp also announced its intent to build an overseas headquarters in Taiwan, with Taipei and New Taipei City each attempting to woo the US chipmaker The US-based Super Micro Computer Inc and Taiwan’s Guo Rui on Wednesday announced a joint venture to build a computation center powered only by renewable energy. After meeting with Supermicro founder Charles Liang (梁見後) and Guo Rui chairman Lin Po-wen (林博文), Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) instructed a cross-ministry panel to be established to help promote the government’s green energy policies and facilitate efforts to obtain land for the generation of green power, Executive Yuan spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said. Cho thanked Liang for his company’s support of the government’s 2019 Action Plan for Welcoming Overseas Taiwanese Businesses to Return to Invest in
The unification of China and Taiwan is “non-negotiable,” China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) said yesterday in response to an article by a Chinese academic suggesting that Beijing would not set a timetable for the annexation of Taiwan in the next four years. Chinese international studies researcher Yan Xuetong (閻學通) at Beijing’s Tsinghua University wrote in an article published last week in Foreign Affairs that China’s focus for the next four years would be revitalizing the economy, not preparing a timetable to invade Taiwan. The TAO said that was only the personal opinion of an academic. The Chinese Communist Party has since 1949 committed
China is likely to focus on its economy over the next four years and not set a timetable for attempting to annex Taiwan, a researcher at Beijing’s Tsinghua University wrote in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine on Friday. In the article titled “Why China isn’t scared of Trump: US-Chinese tensions may rise, but his isolationism will help Beijing,” Chinese international studies researcher Yan Xuetong (閻學通) wrote that the US and China are unlikely to go to war over Taiwan in the next four years under US president-elect Donald Trump. While economic and military tensions between the US and China would
The National Immigration Agency (NIA) said Thursday it had caught 124 people attempting to use forged documents to visit Taiwan since allowing Chinese nationals based overseas to apply for entry permits in September last year. The NIA’s revelation comes after unnamed immigration officials and travel agency workers cited in a CNA report Wednesday said that Chinese entry permit applicants had submitted forged documents showing they were students in Malaysia. After closing its borders to Chinese tourists on Jan. 22, 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan began allowing those living or studying outside of China to enter from a third country on Sept.