Taiwan should play a more “positive and constructive” role in the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) dispute, a former US State Department official said on Friday.
“At a minimum Taiwan should not be a problem or an obstacle to constructive resolution,” Project 2049 president Randy Schriver said.
Schriver, a former US deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian Affairs, said that Taiwan’s good communications with all of the participants could be a “huge asset.” He added that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) East China Sea peace plan needed to be taken more seriously.
“Taiwan is the only one that has a plan on the table and we should look at it,” he said in a speech at a Heritage Foundation conference on “Shoring Up the US-Taiwan Partnership.”
“We have a problem in the Senkakus [Japan’s name for the islands] area and if the assessment of Washington is that Taiwan has contributed unfavorably to that problem, it will hurt US-Taiwan relations,” he said.
Schriver said Taiwan should go to “great lengths” to avoid the appearance of any collusion with China on the issue. He said that while the US did not have a position on the sovereignty of the islands, Washington was not neutral.
“Our treaty obligations and our long-term strategic interests do not make us desirous of seeing the islands falling under the sovereignty of the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” he said.
Speaking with great emphasis, Schriver said: “Taiwan should avoid the appearance of collusion because I believe that would be viewed unfavorably.”
“Taiwan should be working positively with Tokyo and trying to improve that relationship [so as] not [to] cause any damage or any rifts,” he said. “Taiwan is stuck between its most important economic partner, China, and its most important security partner, the US-Japan alliance.”
He said the US could not fulfill its defense obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) without the US-Japan alliance.
“Japan is arguably Taiwan’s second-most important security partner,” he said. “If Taiwan undertakes activities that cause problems with Tokyo, that will cause problems with the United States and that should be avoided.”
He said Taiwan needed to avoid any activities that created “further uncertainty and chaos in an operating environment that is already uncertain and chaotic.”
Chinese and Japanese military and coast guard “assets” were now operating in close proximity to one another with no rules of the road, no crisis communication and no crisis management capability, he said.
“If Taiwan enters into that fray, it can only be a downside,” he said.
“We do not need a war and as much as you can say we would never fight over a pile of rocks, we have fought over stranger things in the past,” Schriver said.
“The trend lines right now are very dangerous. When the PRC decided to add air activity to this mix, they shortened the time line of decisionmaking to seconds. That’s hard for civilian leadership to maintain positive command and control,” he said.
Schriver said again that the US would “look very unfavorably” on any activity that added to the existing “chaotic operating environment.”
Taiwan should be a “constructive participant,” should avoid risks and do more to help solve the situation.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but