The US Department of State on Tuesday joined a controversy surrounding remarks made by former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) chairman Richard Bush about Taiwan’s presidential elections.
“Mr Bush does not speak for the US government and his comments were made in a personal capacity,” a Department of State spokesperson said.
Bush, director of the Center for East Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, last week told a Washington conference that the US government “at some time and in some way will express itself on the implications of the 2016 election for US interests.”
“This is something we do. We feel there is a need for us to express our views on how our interests will be affected by Taiwan’s elections,” he said.
Bush’s remarks were widely interpreted as meaning that Washington would try to interfere in the next presidential election and put its thumb on the scales in favor of the party whose policies it favors most.
However, the Department of State said on Tuesday: “We strongly support Taiwan’s democratic system and the will of the people of Taiwan to make their own choice in their upcoming elections.”
“We support free, fair and open elections. The United States has a longstanding interest in peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and urges both sides to avoid any provocative actions,” it said, adding: “We support continued improvement in cross-strait relations that will allow for increased contacts and a further reduction in tensions.”
Earlier the Taipei office of the AIT distanced itself from Bush’s remarks.
Bush was not the first former AIT official to suggest the US might try to play a role in Taiwan’s elections.
Before the previous presidential election, Carnegie Endowment vice president for studies Douglas Paal, a former director of the AIT, wrote that China had privately expressed hope for intervention by the administration of US President Barack Obama to “tilt the political playing field” in favor of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government and against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Paal said that China had counted on former US president George W. Bush’s administration to rein in former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
“But after Ma was elected, Beijing increasingly indicated it wanted the United States to back off. Once again the tide has turned and Beijing is looking to Washington for help to manage what it ordinarily insists are its internal affairs with Taiwan,” Paal said.
“This in turn will create a dilemma for Washington: How to appear impartial in Taiwan’s domestic elections and yet convey its preference for a continuation of Ma Ying-jeou’s management of cross-strait relations. Look for the Obama administration officials to state that they are impartial about the voting and will welcome whatever is the result of the democratic elections in Taiwan,” he said.
“But they are likely also to state that the United States hopes for a continuation of the reduction in tensions and would not welcome provocations from either side of the [Taiwan] Strait,” Paal said.
Addressing the convention last week, Richard Bush said that in September 2011, the Obama administration had “conveyed its views through the Financial Times.”
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) said of this incident that the Obama administration had “apparently gotten into the business of interfering in other countries’ democratic elections.”
After DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) visited Washington in September 2011, the Financial Times reported that a senior US official told the newspaper that Tsai “had sparked concerns about stability in the Taiwan Strait, which is critically important to the US.”
“She left us with distinct doubts about whether she is both willing and able to continue the stability in cross-strait relations the region has enjoyed in recent years,” the senior official was reported as saying.
The institute said it was a “blatant effort” to undermine Tsai’s candidacy and influence the Taiwanese elections.
Following that incident, the Department of State said: “The official mentioned in the [Financial Times] article is totally unknown to us and certainly does not speak for the Obama administration. The administration does not take sides in Taiwan’s (or any country’s) election.”
Also, former US assistant secretary of state for East Asia Kurt Campbell told the US Congress: “We do not believe any one party or leader on Taiwan has a monopoly on effective management of the relationship, and we do not take sides in the elections.”
“We will work closely with whatever leadership emerges from Taiwan’s free and fair elections to build on our enduring commitment to Taiwan’s people, its prosperity and peace,” he 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