Taiwan is being bullied by China and the US should do something about it, a US congressional committee was told on Wednesday.
“We need to help Taiwan avoid being coerced into making unfair concessions to mainland China,” said Patrick Cronin, the senior director of the Asia program at the Center for a New American Security.
Cronin, who had just returned from a visit to Taiwan, said it was being “squeezed” by China “more and more every day.”
Addressing a US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee hearing on “Rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific Region and Implications for US National Security,” Cronin said that Washington needed to accelerate an official review of the US-Japan defense guidelines.
“We need a common strategic approach to countering Chinese coercive diplomacy in the short term and countering Chinese anti-access aerial-denial capabilities in the long run,” he said.
US allies in Asia have been concerned that as China has become stronger, it has also become more assertive, said Michael Auslin, director of Japanese studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
“They’re concerned about their particular sets of territorial disputes and other issues in which they feel that there is little chance for each of them alone to resolve these on terms that would be most favorable to them,” Auslin said.
Over the past several years, there has been an increasing tendency for friends and allies in Asia to look to the US for backup and support, he said.
“In part, they do this because the administration has stated that it is rebalancing, it is re-engaging, it is back in Asia,” Auslin said.
“And yet, when we come down to the specifics that concern them and interest them, the US often takes a pass,” he said.
Auslin said that both Japan and the Philippines felt frustration at the lack of US support over territorial issues with China in the South and East China Seas.
While there was no fear of a major conflict breaking out soon, Auslin said that Asian nations feared that the environment in which they operated today — “the environment they know and understand” — was “slowly slipping away.”
“That is where the influence of the United States is most important — in stressing that we will not passively sit by while the security environment degrades for the worse and then raise the significant questions about stability, insecurity and the potential for conflict,” Auslin said.
“The administration needs to more clearly articulate the rationale behind the rebalance and its goals,” he said.
Admiral Gary Roughead, the former commander of the US Pacific fleet, said the US approach in rebalancing “must be strategic and not superficial.”
The admiral asked the committee to consider whether China was intending ultimately to become not only assertive, but aggressive.
“I think we should actually be very worried and should ask ourselves the question why is everyone who can afford it in the region buying more weapons?” Roughead said.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Snow fell in the mountainous areas of northern, central and eastern Taiwan in the early hours of yesterday, as cold air currents moved south. In the northern municipality of Taoyuan, snow started falling at about 6am in Fusing District (復興), district head Su Tso-hsi (蘇佐璽) said. By 10am, Lalashan National Forest Recreation Area, as well as Hualing (華陵), Sanguang (三光) and Gaoyi (高義) boroughs had seen snowfall, Su said. In central Taiwan, Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County and Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County saw snowfall of 5cm and 6cm respectively, by 10am, staff at the parks said. It began snowing
The 2025 Kaohsiung Wonderland–Winter Amusement Park event has teamed up with the Japanese manga series Chiikawa this year for its opening at Love River Bay yesterday, attracting more than 10,000 visitors, the city government said. Following the success of the “2024 Kaohsiung Wonderland” collaboration with a giant inflatable yellow duck installation designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, this year the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau collaborated with Chiikawa by Japanese illustrator Nagano to present two giant inflatable characters. Two inflatable floats — the main character, Chiikwa, a white bear-like creature with round ears, and Hachiware, a white cat with a blue-tipped tail
RSS