A source in the Executive Yuan on Tuesday said that the US’ aim in including Taiwan in its strategy for the Indo-Pacific region was to contain Chinese expansionism, and that mutual goals in the region were a driving force behind cooperation between the nations on infrastructure projects in developing countries.
Taiwanese policymakers for the past several weeks have been weighing how a change in the US administration would affect Taipei’s ties with Washington, particularly in terms of US support in the face of increasing Chinese aggression.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has said that the nation’s US policy would remain unchanged, and academics have argued that the US’ Taiwan policies would also likely remain the same, given a high degree of support for Taiwan across both of the major US political parties.
Adding weight to those claims, Taiwan and the US on Friday last week held their first Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue, and afterward signed a five-year memorandum of understanding, pledging to establish teams to tackle issues including infrastructure and energy.
China has in the past few years stepped up its investments in Southeast Asia and Oceania to influence policy there, and to drive out Taiwan and the US. An article published on Aug. 4 by what was then the Nikkei Asian Review argued that the threat from Chinese investment of about US$10 billion annually in the region is minimal, as it is still less than half of Japan’s US$24 billion per year.
A report published on Sept. 28 by pri.org said a Belt and Road Initiative project had “forced Cambodians from their land and devastated the environment, hurting the livelihoods of local communities, all under the guise of converting Cambodia into a regional logistics hub and tourist destination” for China.
There have also been reports of Beijing capitalizing on the inability of nations such as Sri Lanka to repay Belt and Road loans to take over key ports.
Obviously this presents a security concern for the US, but beyond that it excludes nations such as Taiwan and the US from engaging with those countries diplomatically. Taipei and Washington must communicate with nations in South Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania to learn of their development needs, to be able to provide assistance before China can lock in a stranglehold. This would also be in the interests of Australia and New Zealand, and would be cause for a regional alliance of like-minded nations.
One of the major benefits to Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and the US in helping build infrastructure would be to allow south and southeast Asian nations to break free from their reliance on China, and to shift production to a friendly, distributed supply chain.
An Aug. 21 article published on The Diplomat Web site argued that the US must break its dependency on China, as the “high-tech sector is a critical element to both economic and military strength and stability.”
Taiwan is in a good position to cooperate with the US on high-tech design and production, and Southeast Asia is in a good position to handle general manufacturing — provided that Taipei and Washington can assist with infrastructure development.
Shifting the supply chain to southeast and south Asia would allow Taiwan and the US to support the regions, while also overcoming security and supply-chain concerns posed by reliance on China.
The government is likely to seek opportunities for cooperation with the US under the administration of US president-elect Joe Biden. Those opportunities will likely emphasize regional security, but if they can also emphasize a decoupling from China, and an investment in infrastructure in Southeast and South Asia, that will be a boon to industries there, while also benefiting regional security.
Taiwan and its allies must send a clear message that Chinese investment that victimizes its recipients is not welcome.
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Delegation-level visits between the two countries have become an integral part of transformed relations between India and the US. Therefore, the visit by a bipartisan group of seven US lawmakers, led by US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul to India from June 16 to Thursday last week would have largely gone unnoticed in India and abroad. However, the US delegation’s four-day visit to India assumed huge importance this time, because of the meeting between the US lawmakers and the Dalai Lama. This in turn brings us to the focal question: How and to what extent