A new article by former US assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs Kurt Campbell might contain a veiled warning for Taiwan.
Writing in the Financial Times, Campbell said that until Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) came to power last year, the prevailing view was that Beijing was prepared to shelve hotly disputed issues for a later date and be content to maintain an ill-defined “status quo.”
However, now, China is no longer simply responding, but acting on its own initiative, Campbell said.
He said that by many accounts, Xi is the most powerful leader at this stage of his tenure of any previous Chinese Communist Party leader since Mao Zedong (毛澤東).
While Campbell — one of the most highly respected and knowledgeable US diplomats to specialize in China — does not actually mention Taiwan in the short article, the nation and its problems with Beijing, would seem to fit neatly into his theory about the new shape of China’s foreign policy.
In the past, Campbell said, China watchers saw its actions as “reactively assertive,” suggesting that Beijing’s rulers were simply taking the necessary steps in response to prodding or provocations from surrounding states.
However, the situation has changed with Xi in power, with “various military deployments, policy proclamations, provocative naval maneuvers and rhetorical stridency” in the East and South China seas.
Campbell said the conventional wisdom was that China was primarily focused on its domestic imperatives and “unanticipated accidents and incidents were the worry, not premeditated gambits.”
He said Xi’s ambitious economic reform and his much more robust rhetoric “all suggest that we are entering a new phase.”
Campbell said that, by all accounts, Xi plays a dominant role in the formulation and execution of “matters big and small.”
There is a much more concerted coordination at every level in the Chinese government and “the current set of provocations are not haphazard, they have been carefully choreographed,” Campbell added.
“Recent Chinese steps and the centrality of Xi’s role is yet another reminder of the importance of concentrated, regular, high level diplomacy with China to accurately gauge intent and to send consequential messages,” he said. “Perhaps nothing in the world is more important.”
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck off Tainan at 11:47am today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 32.3km northeast of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 7.3km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Tainan and Chiayi County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and County, and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Kaohsiung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Taitung County and offshore Penghu County, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of
Weather conditions across Taiwan are expected to remain stable today, but cloudy to rainy skies are expected from tomorrow onward due to increasing moisture in the atmosphere, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). Daytime highs today are expected to hit 25-27°C in western Taiwan and 22-24°C in the eastern counties of Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung, data on the CWA website indicated. After sunset, temperatures could drop to 16-17°C in most parts of Taiwan. For tomorrow, precipitation is likely in northern Taiwan as a cloud system moves in from China. Daytime temperatures are expected to hover around 25°C, the CWA said. Starting Monday, areas
Taiwan has recorded its first fatal case of Coxsackie B5 enterovirus in 10 years after a one-year-old boy from southern Taiwan died from complications early last month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. CDC spokesman Lo Yi-chun (羅一鈞) told a news conference that the child initially developed a fever and respiratory symptoms before experiencing seizures and loss of consciousness. The boy was diagnosed with acute encephalitis and admitted to intensive care, but his condition deteriorated rapidly, and he passed away on the sixth day of illness, Lo said. This also marks Taiwan’s third enterovirus-related death this year and the first severe
A Taiwanese software developer has created a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model to help people use AI without exposing sensitive data, project head Huang Chung-hsiao (黃崇校) said yesterday. Huang, a 55-year-old coder leading a US-based team, said that concerns over data privacy and security in popular generative AIs such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek motivated him to develop a personal AI assistant named “Mei.” One of the biggest security flaws with cloud-based algorithms is that users are required to hand over personal information to access the service, giving developers the opportunity to mine user data, he said. For this reason, many government agencies and