US President Joe Biden on Thursday last week vowed to support peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait — the first time he did so in a State of the Union Address.
Biden had on four occasions — mainly in response to media queries — asserted that Washington would provide military aid to defend Taiwan against a hypothetical invasion by China. During his address to the US Congress, the US president did not, as is customary, start with domestic affairs, focusing instead on international issues, such as Taiwan.
“We’re standing up against China’s unfair economic practices, and standing up for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” he said.
Biden added that he has revitalized the nation’s partnerships and alliances in the Asia-Pacific region and made sure the most advanced US technologies cannot be used in Chinese weapons.
“We’re in a stronger position to win the competition for the 21st century against China,” he said.
While the US presidential election in November will almost certainly be a rematch between Biden and former US president Donald Trump, Biden’s address is widely considered to have made the case that he has done a better job in foreign affairs than Trump, who is considered a transactional leader prioritizing US interests and taking an isolationist strategy in international affairs.
Biden’s words are not only a warning to China about its escalating military intrusions across the Taiwan Strait, they also set the tone that no matter who wins the election, confronting China’s economic unfairness and geopolitical expansionism will be a major challenge — as it is with Russia.
Biden’s statement also confronted the rising “US skepticism,” which has long been promoted by Beijing’s state propaganda to subvert relations between the US and its allies, including Taiwan.
A spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office recently said that “the US could abandon Taiwan under a second Trump presidency” and “the US will always pursue ‘America First,’ and Taiwan could change from a ‘chess piece’ to an ‘abandoned piece’ at any time.”
President-elect William Lai (賴清德) and his new administration, which is to take office in May, should get prepared for the US election and set up a new strategy to ensure mutually trustworthy and beneficial relations with the US. One priority should be to put Taiwan-China tensions under the Indo-Pacific framework to ensure that US foreign policy maintains its influence and keep order in the region, which would benefit Taipei.
If Trump returns to the White House, that would also cause concerns for China and Russia. Trump in 2016 made a historic phone call to then-president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), a leap forward in US-
Taiwan relations that put a hole in China’s coercive “one China” principle.
Taiwan should also advance cooperation with international like-minded democracies, especially with neighboring the Philippines, India, Japan and South Korea. Manila has struck new security agreements with at least 18 countries since a China Coast Guard vessel last year flashed a military-grade laser at Philippine ships, aiming to establish a “network of alliances.” Taiwan could learn from its example by establishing a security campaign spanning the South and East China seas, as well as the Taiwan Strait, to deter Chinese aggression.
Having a shared threat perception could be one of the most important drivers for closer strategic relations, experts have said.
Taiwan’s incoming government should make the best of concerns in Washington and the international community over China’s coercive expansionism to help safeguard the nation’s sovereignty and development.
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
To The Honorable Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜): We would like to extend our sincerest regards to you for representing Taiwan at the inauguration of US President Donald Trump on Monday. The Taiwanese-American community was delighted to see that Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan speaker not only received an invitation to attend the event, but successfully made the trip to the US. We sincerely hope that you took this rare opportunity to share Taiwan’s achievements in freedom, democracy and economic development with delegations from other countries. In recent years, Taiwan’s economic growth and world-leading technology industry have been a source of pride for Taiwanese-Americans.
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
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