The US, Japan and South Korea underlined the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait in a joint statement issued a day after the three governments held the first trilateral Indo-Pacific Dialogue in Washington on Friday.
US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink, Japanese Foreign Policy Bureau Deputy Minister and Director-General Yasuhiro Kobe and South Korean Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Chung Byung-won met to discuss each country’s Indo-Pacific approach and opportunities for cooperation, the US Department of State said in a news release on Saturday.
The three representatives “reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as indispensable to security and prosperity in the international community,” it said.
Photo: Screengrab from X page of the US Department Of State Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Regarding China’s “dangerous and escalatory behavior supporting unlawful maritime claims” in the South China Sea, the three urged countries to follow international law, the statement said.
They “opposed any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion anywhere in the waters of the Indo-Pacific,” it said.
In Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the statement and thanked the three countries for reiterating their stance on the Taiwan Strait issue.
The statement followed the concern voiced by US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol during their summit in August last year, the ministry said in a news release yesterday.
Beijing’s recent deployment of balloons across the Taiwan Strait’s median line, suspension of tariff cuts on imports of certain Taiwanese products and cognitive warfare campaign were clear attempts to influence Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections on Saturday, the ministry said.
The importance of cross-strait peace and stability is a global consensus, it said, adding that Taiwan would continue working with like-minded partners to promote peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.
Separately, Japan and South Korea could consider Taiwan a common strategic issue, which would improve security in the Indo-Pacific region, a Taiwanese researcher said in the Annual Assessment of the Security Environment in the Indo-Pacific Region report.
The report was published on Wednesday last week by the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
If Japan and South Korea are willing to cooperate with each other and even with Taipei to deter China from invading Taiwan, a “Taiwan contingency” could be prevented, institute associate research fellow Wang Tsun-yen (王尊彥) said.
Japan’s stance regarding the issue — “a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency” — is known, while South Korea has begun voicing concerns about the cross-strait situation in the second half of the administration of former South Korean president Moon Jae-in, he said.
Ensuring peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is in the two countries’ interests, as a cross-strait conflict would inevitably affect Japan and the Strait is a crucial gateway to Southeast Asia and South Asia, according to South Korea’s New Southern Policy, he said.
Growing ties between Japan and South Korea in the past year have “great strategic significance in terms of the Indo-Pacific region’s security,” he added.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
RSS