Deterrence is fading; war is looming on the Taiwan Strait and for other targets of the China-enabled dictatorship alliance, and after three years the cure is just dawning on the Biden Administration. Now mind you, for a May 28, 2024 interview with Time magazine, President Joe Biden made his 5th public commitment that the United States would defend Taiwan. Less than three weeks later the United States Navy, along with ships from navies of Japan, Canada, the Netherlands, and France, were conducting the Valiant Shield joint force exercise in the Philippine Sea south of Taiwan and in the South China Sea to
The official media of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reacted to the May 20 inauguration speech of President William Lai (賴清德) by asserting: “Lai’s words reveal his true intention of sacrificing peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait for his own desire for power.” This baseless accusation by Beijing that Lai is manipulating Taiwanese to resist unification with China for his personal gain, is part of a broader CCP information warfare campaign that has intensified since Lai’s election. This campaign, orchestrated by the United Front Work Department, the CCP’s agency for coordinating influence operations and propaganda, aims to demoralize Taiwanese,
A facile way to frame the future of US foreign policy is to set up two scenarios as a binary choice. If former US president Donald Trump returns to the White House, the US becomes isolationist. If US President Joe Biden wins re-election, the US remains broadly internationalist. That framing neglects a change that might be less obvious but more consequential for other countries, a shift that would keep playing out no matter who wins in November: For the first time in its two-and-a-half centuries, the US would stop looking at the world through the lens of its own exceptionalism, and
Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Tai-yuan (邱泰源) on Friday said the ministry supports keeping priority seats on public transportation, but is considering expanding the eligibility criteria and renaming the seats. Chiu’s remarks came after local news media over the past few weeks reported incidents involving priority seats, once again sparking heated discussion about whether the seats should be abolished or regulations regarding them should be revised. On June 11, an older woman asked a young woman on a Taipei MRT train to yield her priority seat. The young woman refused, saying that she needed the seat after working a 12-hour shift.