The way that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is pushing Taiwan’s claims to the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) could damage bilateral relations with the US, academics said on Tuesday in Washington.
While the US is doing all it can to calm the sovereignty dispute over the Diaoyutais, known as the Senkakus in Japan, academics at the Taiwan Roundtable at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies in Washington said Ma may have been overly active in making Taiwan’s case.
“Ma’s call for trilateral peace talks [with Japan and China] is more in line with what the US wants to see happening,” George Washington University’s Robert Sutter said.
Even so, there has been a “muted response” from the US and there is continuing debate over just how much Washington welcomes the idea, Sutter said.
Weighing the pros and cons of the situation, the US could be seeing Taiwan as a problem in this issue, he added.
“You could come to the conclusion that the US government would prefer that Taiwan not further complicate the situation,” he said.
He stressed that US President Barack Obama’s overwhelming priority was to end the “turmoil and contention” over the islands and bring the issue under control.
At a time when Washington is trying to iron out problems surrounding the islands, Taiwan taking a more assertive stance “is something that is probably not welcome,” Sutter said.
Ma’s actions of sending coastguard boats to protect fishing vessels approaching the islands and becoming involved in a water canon fight with the Japanese “do not fit well with what the US wants to do.”
Sutter said Taiwan could be seen by the US as being “disruptive.”
He added that it was easy for Taiwan to be seen as “unimportant and to be ignored” and this could be one reason Ma was being forceful over the islands’ sovereignty.
“Being part of the process is every bit as important as the outcome,” Towson University’s Steven Phillips said.
Taiwan does not have to win the Diaoyutais conflict, but it does not want to be seen as losing, he added.
Ma’s actions over the islands were “an attempt to raise up Taiwan’s international status” as much as they were an attempt to win sovereignty, Phillips said.
Phillips said that as the weakest of the three claimants in terms of the size of its economy and military, there was a danger that the issue could damage Taipei’s credibility.
“Taiwan might raise its international profile, but it could be harmful in the long run to its relations with the US and Japan,” Phillips said.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS