Academics yesterday weighed in on Friday’s meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), saying that they were relieved that Taiwan was not on the agenda in the first meeting between the two leaders.
The Trump-Xi meeting was more symbolic than substantial, National Chung Hsing University international politics professor Tsai Ming-yan (蔡明彥) said.
In the meeting between Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in February, Tsai said the US and Japan issued a post-meeting joint statement reasserting the US’ commitment to maintaining Japan’s security and consolidating the US-Japan coalition, a contrast to this week’s meeting.
The seemingly harmonious atmosphere during Thursday and Friday’s meeting was contrived, Tsai said, because a post-meeting news conference held by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson revealed that fundamental issues between the US and China need to be addressed, such as the US’ trade deficit with China and Beijing’s breach of international convention by military expansion into the South China and East China seas.
What Trump and Xi established were channels for future dialogue on trade, foreign policy, information security, religious freedom and human rights, Tsai said, adding that he believes the specific topics set to be discussed via these channels would help them operate more effectively than former US president Barack Obama’s US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue, which failed to help the two sides engage.
Tsai said that the US in a pre-meeting news conference reiterated its commitment to Taiwan by stressing the importance of the Taiwan Relations Act, that it is against China annexing Taiwan by force and that it would continue to move bilateral cooperation forward.
“This signaled to China that Washington’s ‘one China’ policy is different from Beijing’s ‘one China’ principle, and that there is not much room for the US to make concessions on Taiwan affairs, which are not to be bargained with,” Tsai said.
“With the high level of importance the Trump administration attaches to the Taiwan Relations Act, China will likely have to make adjustments [to its Taiwan policy], while Taiwan can capitalize on [the US’] proper handling of its competitive and cooperative relationship with China, thus continuing to strengthen the Taiwan-US partnership under the framework set by the act,” he added.
“The fact that Taiwan was not on the agenda was the best we could have hoped for,” National Taiwan Normal University political science professor Fan Shih-ping (范世平) said.
Trump’s aides are likely to urge Beijing to resume interactions with President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration, as its current policy “does not work” and only motivates more Taiwanese to join the pan-green political camp in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, Fan said.
Trump and Xi might have seemed cordial toward each other at a banquet on Friday, but it was about the same time that Trump attacked Syrian military facilities, which was “embarrassing” for Xi, because China has spoken against US military intervention in Syria, Fan said.
Trump’s move was aimed at asserting the US’ leadership and to show Xi that the US would be capable of launching a similar assault on North Korea, pressuring Xi to clarify his stance on Korean Peninsula tensions, he added.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS