The Presidential Office yesterday welcomed a joint statement by the US and Japan that underscores their commitment to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
The statement, issued by the White House after a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, highlighted the countries’ deepening partnership on defense — including of cyber and space defense — as well as on key technologies, healthcare and the climate.
“We oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East China Sea. We reiterated our objections to China’s unlawful maritime claims and activities in the South China Sea,” it said.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
“We underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues. We share serious concerns regarding the human rights situations in Hong Kong and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” it added.
The government is glad to see that the US and Japan continue to emphasize the importance of peace and stability in the region, Presidential Office spokesman Xavier Chang (張惇涵) said in a statement yesterday.
Cross-strait relations have become a concern for the Indo-Pacific region and even the world, he said.
Photo: CNA
“We hope that Beijing will fulfill its responsibility ... [and] make positive contributions to regional security and welfare,” he said.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has repeatedly said that Taiwan would not succumb to pressure, nor would it make reckless moves, even if it garners more support, Chang added.
Taiwan, the US and Japan share common values in defending freedom, democracy and human rights, as well as common interests in promoting regional security and prosperity, Chang said, pledging to deepen relations with like-minded partners.
Meanwhile, Japanese Minister of Defense Nobuo Kishi yesterday on Twitter posted photographs of a meeting with soldiers on Japan’s westernmost populated island of Yonaguni.
The photos show him looking toward Taiwan, although he wrote that he could not see it due to the cloudy weather.
Yonaguni is about 110km from Taiwan, and boosting Japan’s southwestern defense system is very important for Japan, Kishi wrote.
During his visit, he has met with Japanese army, navy and air force members on the island, he added.
Separately, Japan-Republic of China Diet Members’ Consultative Council chairman Keiji Furuya yesterday posted a photo on Twitter of Japan’s national flag hoisted in front of a building.
Japanese Representative to Taiwan Hiroyasu Izumi has defied Beijing’s pressure and raised the flag at the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association in Taipei, Furuya said.
The photograph shows Izumi’s official residence in Taipei’s Yangmingshan area (陽明山), where the envoy started flying the flag in January, the association said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS