President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday met with US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar in the highest-level official meeting between the two nations since 1979.
“It is a true honor to be here to convey a message of strong support and friendship from [US] President [Donald] Trump to Taiwan,” Azar said during the open portion of his courtesy call to the Presidential Office, which was streamed live online before Tsai and Azar held a closed-door meeting.
“Taiwan’s response to COVID-19 has been among the most successful in the world, and that is a tribute to the open, transparent, democratic nature of Taiwan’s society and culture,” Azar said.
Photo: EPA-EFE / Presidential Office handout
The US has expressed its admiration for Taiwan’s democratic success in tangible ways, such as signing legislation to strengthen the bilateral partnership and opening a new American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) complex in Taipei in 2018, Azar said.
The focus of his trip was to highlight Taiwan’s success in combating the COVID-19 pandemic and to build cooperation to prevent, detect and respond to health threats, he said.
Tsai said that she hoped the US delegation’s visits to various government agencies and institutions would give them a substantive view of Taiwan’s efforts to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
“The visit also provides us an opportunity to speak face-to-face on issues of importance to both sides and find a direction to future cooperation,” Tsai said.
She thanked the US for recognizing Taiwan’s contribution to the global coronavirus response and for supporting its efforts to expand its international participation.
She also raised the issue of Taiwan’s exclusion from the World Health Assembly (WHA), which has been largely due to China’s objections.
“The decision to bar Taiwan from participation in the WHA is a violation of the universal right to health,” she said.
Azar, who arrived on Sunday, is on a four-day visit, the first by a US Cabinet member in six years, and he is the most senior US official to visit since Washington and Taipei severed formal diplomatic ties in 1979.
At a press briefing prior to his meeting with Tsai, Azar told reporters that “this visit is about Taiwan,” in response to questions about US-Taiwan-China relations and Beijing’s anger over his visit.
“This visit represents an acknowledgement of the United States and Taiwan’s deep friendship and partnership across security, economics, healthcare, and democratic open transparent values,” he said.
“This visit is about reaffirming our connections with Taiwan and the important role Taiwan plays in public health,” he added.
In his opening statement at the briefing, Azar said that his visit was “consistent with the [US’] long-standing ‘one China’ policy and past engagement with Taiwan.”
In related news, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said that the Tsai administration should be careful in its handling of external affairs, particularly in light of the deteriorating US-China relations.
In other developments, Air Force Headquarters said two Chinese warplanes briefly crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait yesterday morning.
A Shenyang J-11 and a Chengdu J-10 briefly crossed the line into Taiwan’s side at about 9am, but retreated after Taiwanese patrol planes issued radio warnings, it said.
There was no cause for public alarm, and the military is continuing to closely monitor the airspace and waters around Taiwan, the headquarters added.
Yesterday’s incursion was the third time that Chinese People’s Liberation Army aircraft crossed the median line since March last year, Ministry of National Defense data showed.
Yesterday’s action was a protest by Beijing against the improvement of US-Taiwan relations, as demonstrated by Azar’s visit, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) said.
The move was also intended to appease Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “warmongers” and was a sign of “tremendous stupidity on the part of the CCP. There is absolutely no good in it for them,” Wang said.
Additional reporting by Aaron Tu
‘HARD DECISION’: The international medical society now only refers to Taiwanese groups as from ‘Chinese Taipei,’ after the WHO asked that it make the change Two Taiwanese medical groups have been forced to change the word “Taiwan” in their membership names for the International Society of Radiographers and Radiological Technologists (ISRRT) to “Chinese Taipei,” due to a request by the WHO. The two groups are the Taiwan Society of Radiological Technologists (TWSRT) and the Taiwan Association of Medical Radiation Technologists (TAMRT). On Dec. 23 last year, the TAMRT posted on Facebook screenshots of a letter it received from the ISRRT, informing it that the two groups’ membership names would be changed from “Taiwan - TWSRT” and “Taiwan - TAMRT” to “Chinese Taipei - TWSRT” and “Chinese Taipei
‘NO MORE’: Pompeo’s decision was not rushed before the change of administration, but was the result of a long review of Taiwan-US ties, a US assistant secretary said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday announced that the US Department of State is voiding long-standing restrictions on how US diplomats and others have contact with their counterparts in Taiwan, just a little over a week before US president-elect Joe Biden is sworn in. Pompeo instructed executive branch agencies to consider “all ‘contact guidelines’ regarding relations with Taiwan ... to be null and void.” “For several decades the State Department has created complex internal restrictions to regulate our diplomats, service members, and other officials’ interactions with their Taiwanese counterparts,” Pompeo said in a statement. “The United States government took these actions
CONTACTS TRACED: The doctor and his nurse girlfriend, who also tested positive, have only mild symptoms, but their cases have led to hundreds of people being tested The first case of a doctor contracting COVID-19 after treating an infected patient was one of two locally transmitted cases and two imported cases reported by the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday. The second local case, No. 839, is the doctor’s girlfriend, a nurse who works at the same hospital. Case No. 838, a man in his 30s, is a doctor in a hospital in northern Taiwan that has been treating COVID-19 cases, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center. He was in a negative-pressure isolation ward where one of the confirmed patients was staying
DEPARTURE CEREMONY: Guam’s governor hailed the US’ move to end restrictions on contacts with Taiwanese officials, saying it would help the territory build ties with Taipei A humanitarian charter flight, carrying dozens of people who had either been stranded on Guam and Saipan amid border closures or were in need of medical treatment, arrived in Taiwan at 5:25pm yesterday. The flight, operated by China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), landed at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport with 47 passengers and 13 crew aboard. Five of the passengers had applied to local hospitals for treatment of tumors, heart arrhythmia or other conditions, and were approved by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, while four more are family members, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is the spokesman
RSS