The next president of the US should consider normalizing relations with Taiwan, a Washington conference was told on Friday.
When the US extends legitimacy to a communist regime and does not recognize a democracy, “what kind of signal does that send to the rest of the world?” Project 2049 Institute executive director Mark Stokes asked.
Stokes was addressing a Hudson Institute conference on what the next US president should do about China’s strategy in Asia.
Stokes, a former Pentagon official, said that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) strategy toward Taiwan was clear — “unification on Beijing’s terms.”
That would leave the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole representative of “one China” on the international stage, he said.
“The objective reality is that there are two legitimate governments, one on each side of the Taiwan Strait,” Stokes said.
He said that the US went “full bore” in switching diplomatic recognition to the PRC, but that since the first peaceful change of government on Taiwan in 2000, it has become “increasingly difficult to sustain this approach.”
From 1972 to 1979, Washington had relatively normal relations with both sides of the Taiwan Strait, Stokes said.
“There is nothing in our one China policy that would restrict us from moving towards relatively normal relations with both sides of the Strait,” he said.
Regarding the ongoing US presidential campaign and next year’s election, Taiwan should be on the agenda, Stokes said, adding that, at the very least, it was worth having candidates look into the possibility of “balancing” legitimacy on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
When asked if the next president of the US should sell diesel-electric submarines to Taiwan, Stokes said that he was overwhelmingly in favor of such a move, but that the White House should not wait for a new administration to decide on the issue.
The administration of US President Barack Obama should “sooner, rather than later” allow US companies to assist Taiwan with the development of its own indigenous diesel-electric submarines.
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Asian studies director Dan Blumenthal said that he was “very pro” selling submarines or submarine technology to Taiwan.
Blumenthal, a former senior director for China and Taiwan at the Pentagon, said that every US ally in Asia had submarines and that it was “obvious” Taiwan should also have modern submarines in its fleet.
If the US public were to be asked if they thought Taiwan should have submarines, the answer would be a “resounding ‘yes,’” he said.
Although strategic competition is not the only dimension of the Sino-American relationship, “it is beginning to define it,” Blumenthal said in a paper published on Friday by the AEI.
He said the challenge for Washington is not that China is richer or more powerful, but rather the kind of power it is becoming under continued one-party rule by the CCP.
China faces internal problems in Xinjiang, Tibet and Sichuan, Blumenthal added.
He said that recent events in Hong Kong were a reminder that China will do whatever it takes to suppress democracy movements demanding more autonomy.
However, “that is not an easy task, particularly in a partially postmodern world in which protest movements can quickly gain international support,” Blumenthal said.
The coast guard drove away 567 Chinese boats and seized seven illegally operating in Taiwanese waters in the first six months of this year, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. They mostly operated near Kinmen and Penghu counties, resulting in fines totaling NT$1.7 million (US$52,440), it said. Three ships — two near Kinmen County and one near Penghu County — were detained in January for illegally crossing the border, while one ship each was detained near Kinmen in February and Penghu in March respectively, it said. The ship seized near Penghu in January was the Yun Ao (雲澳), detained by the CGA’s
The entire Alishan Forest Railway line is to reopen for the first time in 15 years on Saturday, with tickets to go on sale at 2pm today. The historic railway from Chiayi to Alishan (阿里山) is finally set to reopen after the completion of the final No. 42 tunnel, Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office Deputy Director-General Chou Heng-kai (周恆凱) said. It is to run on a new timetable, with four trains daily, he said. The 9am train is to depart from Chiayi Railway Station bound for Shizilu Station (十字路), while the 10am train departing from Chiayi is to go all the
Beijing’s recent provocative actions against the Philippines in the South China Sea were partly meant as a “dress rehearsal” for the invasion of Taiwan, former US deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger said at a Heritage Foundation forum in Washington on Tuesday. Beijing’s blocking of a Philippine resupply mission on June 17 with unprecedented violence had multiple implications. “What they’re doing is trying to demonstrate that they can blockade, create a sense of futility and discredit the idea that the United States is going to help not only the Philippines, but by extension Taiwan,” Pottinger said. Pottinger was referring to a clash
FLU CONTINUES: Hospitals reported 101,091 visits for flu-like illnesses last week, while 68 severe cases and 16 flu-related deaths were also reported, the CDC said The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported 932 hospitalizations due to COVID-19 and 64 related deaths for last week, adding that the number of people who had contracted new SARS-CoV-2 subvariants KP.2 and LB.1 has increased. The number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 increased from 815 in the previous week to 932 last week, while 90 percent of the 64 deceased were aged 65 or older, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. JN.1 was still the dominant variant among local and imported cases in the past four weeks, while KP.2 was the second-most common, Lin said. Cases with the LB.1 subvariant