Washington sources said that both the White House and the US Department of State were taken by surprise at the depth of defeat suffered by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the nine-in-one elections on Saturday last week.
However, US Department of State spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the US would continue to encourage Beijing and Taipei to continue their “constructive dialogue.”
The US view on cross-strait relations had not changed, she said.
Former Pentagon official Dan Blumenthal said the elections showed that Taiwan was “drifting away” from China, and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) would have to deal with it.
“Xi is a strongman — it would be unwise to believe he will simply let Taiwan drift,” said Blumenthal, who is now director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
The only way Xi could “reunify the motherland” was by force and coercion since no one in Taiwan would simply give away their democratic freedoms to a repressive Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he said.
Writing in a blog for Foreign Policy magazine’s Web site, he said the 2016 presidential elections in Taiwan would be a major test for Xi.
“Will he risk serious tension in the Asia-Pacific to try and affect who becomes Taiwan’s president?” Blumenthal wrote.
The US would have to reckon with a “structurally unstable” situation in the Taiwan Strait, he said.
“For Washington, this means the Taiwan Strait remains the main flashpoint in the Asia Pacific,” he said. “It will need to deter a China that may increasingly externalize its problems. Washington’s China-Taiwan policy must find a way to keep China focused on solving internal problems, protecting the democratic freedoms of the Taiwanese, while playing for time.”
The Taiwanese feared a political association with China, exacerbated by Xi’s handling of Hong Kong, he said.
He criticized US President Barack Obama’s administration for failing to “push hard” for Taiwan’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and for offering only “tepid” support for Taiwan’s quest for submarines.
Blumenthal said support for unification with China would “continue to wither away” in Taiwan and that the next presidential contest would be about how best to manage de facto independence.
His views were echoed by a reports in other US media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, which predicted that as Taiwan moved toward the January 2016 presidential elections, “expect tensions to rise across the Taiwan Strait.”
The newspaper also warned that the danger of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ascent following the nine-in-one elections was that it could freeze trade liberalization not just with China, but with all other countries, “with disastrous consequences for Taiwan’s export economy.”
US government sources, speaking on the condition that they not be named because they were not authorized to comment on the elections, said there was a real danger of growing tensions in the Taiwan Strait if Taiwan moved toward greater independence as the DPP’s influence increases.
The New York Times said the election results signaled that the KMT “will be hard-pressed to retain the presidency.”
Bloomberg news service quoted New York-based Park Strategies senior vice president Sean King as saying: “If opposition Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) can bring her party’s notoriously bickering factions together just long enough to draft a mainland China policy that doesn’t scare off the middle of the electorate, she may very well find herself elected president 14 months from now.”
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS