The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is optimistic that its sour relations with the US is in the past and would be rebuilt by better channels of communication regardless of who wins today’s US presidential election, DPP officials said yesterday.
Relations with the US have been one of the priority issues since he took the party’s helm and it would continue to be so, DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) told a forum, which previewed the US presidential election, at DPP headquarters.
Relations between the DPP and the US took a downturn during the latter part of Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) presidency and hit bottom after the US beef controversy and a US official’s criticism of DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), said Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), executive director of the DPP’s Policy Research Committee.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
However, the DPP is determined to put the past behind, with the party sending legislators and party officials to the US Democratic Party and Republican Party’s conventions in August and September, Wu said.
Wu and Liu Shih-chung (劉世忠), director of the DPP’s Department of International Affairs, also visited officials of the US government and the Republican Party.
The response to the trips were phenomenal, as US officials showed their good will and intention to ensure smooth communication with the DPP, said Wu, who was formerly Taiwan’s representative to the US.
“People I talked to in the US expressed wishes for Taiwan to maintain closer relations with Japan and concern toward President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) pro-China handling of the dispute over the Diaoyutais (釣魚台),” Wu said.
With the establishment of an office in Washington in the plan, the DPP is confident that it could work with the US government regardless of who — US President Barack Obama or his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney — wins the presidential election, Liu said.
The party expressed its wish to avoid the “surprise and misunderstanding” during the January presidential campaign and reassure Washington that Su’s mentality and approach on China affairs would be “flexible and pragmatic,” Liu said.
With the US election going down to the wire with no clear-cut favorite, the only sure thing for Taiwan is that the US team on Asia-Pacific affairs would be undergoing personnel changes, said Joanne Chang (裘兆琳), a research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies.
In a review of Obama’s Taiwan policy, Chang said the US president had placed US-Taiwan relations under the framework of US-Sino relations during his first two years in office, between 2008 and 2010.
However, Obama’s good will was not well-accepted by the Chinese, which was why he approved the arms sale to Taiwan in 2010 and later made changes on his Taiwan policy, evidenced by closer bilateral engagement at APEC, inclusion of Taiwan in the visa-waiver program and high-level talks in the Pentagon, Chang said.
Creating jobs and promoting exports would be high on the agenda of whoever wins the US election and that could pose concerns for Taiwan because the US is not a Santa Claus who only helps Taiwan without asking favors in return, she said.
“The US could look for exporting more products to Taiwan. And Taiwan has to be ready for the impact, in particular after the US beef controversy last year,” Chang said.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
‘MALIGN PURPOSE’: Governments around the world conduct espionage operations, but China’s is different, as its ultimate goal is annexation, a think tank head said Taiwan is facing a growing existential threat from its own people spying for China, experts said, as the government seeks to toughen measures to stop Beijing’s infiltration efforts and deter Taiwanese turncoats. While Beijing and Taipei have been spying on each other for years, experts said that espionage posed a bigger threat to Taiwan due to the risk of a Chinese attack. Taiwan’s intelligence agency said China used “diverse channels and tactics” to infiltrate the nation’s military, government agencies and pro-China organizations. The main targets were retired and active members of the military, persuaded by money, blackmail or pro-China ideology to steal
RSS