On visiting the White House
On Wednesday last week, the Financial Times published an article titled “Washington press Taiwan presidential frontrunner on White House comments,” written by Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Kathrin Hille in Taipei. The article raised an interesting question: Who exactly is the person in Washington pressing a Taiwan presidential candidate on his White House comments?
“Top Taiwanese officials are not allowed to make official visits to Washington, as part of the equation that has guided US policy on Beijing and Taipei since 1979,” the article said.
However, according to US Public Law No. 115-135, also known as the Taiwan Travel Act, to encourage visits between the US and Taiwan that the US Senate and House of Representatives unanimously passed, senior US officials are allowed to travel to Taiwan and vice versa.
On April 26, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and first lady Kim Keon-hee visited the White House, and on May 18, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited the White House, too. This was exciting news in Taiwan, encouraging Taiwanese to work more closely with the US. It is something that Japan and South Korea can, and Taiwan should be able to do.
Taiwan is an important trade partner of the US. On June 1, Washington signed a trade agreement with Taipei. The two governments said that the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade would strengthen commercial relations by improving customs, investment and other regulations. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, is also helping the US build a massive US$40 billion factory in Arizona.
As a free and vibrant economy, Taiwan is a democratic success story. It is the eighth-largest economy in Asia and the 20th-largest in the world by purchasing power parity, with the IMF classifying Taiwan as an advanced economy and the World Bank counting it among high-income economies.
Dennis Wilder was well known in Taiwan as the former US National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs. On Aug. 30, 2007, Wilder said: “Taiwan, or the Republic of China, is not at this point a state in the international community. The position of the United States government is that the ROC, Republic of China, is an issue undecided, and it has been left undecided, as you know, for many, many years.”
These days he has been quoted as saying the US administration is very anxious about Lai. Why?
According to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the US was assigned as the principal occupying power of “Formosa and the Pescadores.” Of course, working closely with the White House is the No. 1 job of Taiwan’s elected president and Taiwanese expect that he or she would have a chance to visit the White House.
It is incorrect to say that Taiwan today is the endgame of the Chinese Civil War, the conflict between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Historically, it is the unfinished business of the US in the West Pacific after World War II.
As Sevastopulo and Hille raised the question of the Taiwanese presidential candidate’s comment about visiting the White House, does it mean that Taiwan should head for Zhongnanhai in Beijing instead of the White House in Washington?
Next year would mark four centuries since Dutch Formosa was established in 1624. As a Taiwanese, I strongly hope that Taiwan’s elected president would one day be able to visit the White House.
John Hsieh
Hayward, California
Hoping for a typhoon day
As Typhoon Doksuri approaches Taiwan, it could be the first typhoon to hit the nation in three years. Whether there would be a typhoon holiday is another hotly debated topic.
The regulation for typhoon holidays is based on Article 3 of Operation Regulations on the Suspension of Offices and Classes in Times of Natural Disasters (天然災害停止上班及上課作業辦法), in which natural disasters do not only include typhoons, but also floods, earthquakes, mudslides among others. The point is: Should people be wishing for natural disasters to strike so that they could get a day off work or class?
Those who are secretly wishing for a day off might not necessarily wish for catastrophic damage. The typhoon holiday that they hope happens when the weather forecast predicts torrential rain and strong winds, but in reality little rain and wind occurs.
This kind of mentality could have been spawned by Taiwan’s long working hours, with employees hoping to “gain” an extra day off aside from national holidays and weekends.
However, disasters are often unpredictable and could bring devastating consequences. To wish for a holiday without suffering damage is a thing too good to be true. Rather than keeping our fingers crossed for a holiday, we should be putting efforts into making preparations for the typhoon to keep potential damages to a minimum.
Tseng Heng-chih
Taipei
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