The US on Thursday reiterated its commitment to deepening ties with Taiwan, saying that it would consider opportunities for mutual visits by senior officials to advance the relationship.
US Department of State spokesman Ned Price made the remarks at a regular news briefing when asked what message the US was sending to China with a visit to Taiwan by US Ambassador to Palau John Hennessey-Niland, and whether US policy is a continuation of former US president Donald Trump’s move to lift restrictions on officials traveling to Taiwan.
Hennessey-Niland joined a delegation from Palau alongside Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr, arriving on March 28.
The visit made Hennessey-Niland the first US ambassador to visit Taiwan in an official capacity since 1979, when Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
Taiwan, as a leading democracy, is a critical economic and security partner of the US, “and that’s why we will continue to engage Taiwan consistent with the long-standing ‘one China’ policy,” Price said. “We will consider, just as we have, opportunities for visits to Washington and Taipei by senior-level authorities that advance our unofficial relationship and enable substantive exchanges on issues of mutual concern.”
The Trump administration sent a record number of high-ranking officials to Taiwan, including then-US Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar in August last year, the highest-level visit by a US official since 1979.
In the following month, then-US undersecretary of state Keith Krach became the highest-ranking US Department of State official to visit Taiwan since 1979.
On Jan. 9, just 11 days before the transition to the administration of US President Joe Biden, then-US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said that he was lifting restrictions on contacts between US officials and their Taiwanese counterparts.
The Financial Times on Tuesday reported that the Biden administration is preparing to issue guidelines that would make it easier for US diplomats to meet Taiwanese officials by adopting some of the changes introduced by Trump.
A person familiar with the guidelines said that the rules would focus on encouraging US officials to meet their Taiwanese counterparts, rather than imposing limits on contacts, the Financial Times reported.
A second person said that most of the restrictions on interactions “between US and Taiwanese diplomats ... will disappear,” it reported.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods