Mon, Oct 14, 2024 page2

• China threat changing: diplomat

  SELF-DEFENSE: Although more countries are supporting Taiwan, it is still willing to defend itself, ‘because once you taste democracy, people will not go back,’ Alexander Yui said

  • By Fang Wei-li and Esme Yeh / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  Chinese threats against Taiwan have gone through two “qualitative changes,” Representative to the US Alexander Yui said in an interview last week, adding that the nation is determined to safeguard its way of life.

  The first “qualitative change” came in 2016, when former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was elected and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) assumed power, Yui said in the interview published on Wednesday on news site The Diplomat.

  Beijing has become increasingly aggressive, as it “did not like the DPP in power,” he said.

  

  Representative to the US Alexander Yui is pictured in an undated photograph.

  Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

  That aggression transformed into “constant threat and coercion,” the second “qualitative change,” after then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022, which Beijing claimed had “crossed a red line,” Yui said.

  Since then, China has been making nearly daily incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zones, sometimes up to 50 times a day, ignoring the median line of the Taiwan Strait, he said.

  Beijing has also engaged in cognitive warfare, such as disinformation and propaganda campaigns designed to interfere with elections and incite xenophobia in Taiwan, he said.

  He cited as an example the “doubt America theory” or “American skepticism theory,” in which the US is described as an unreliable partner who creates regional tension, but would abandon Taiwan should a conflict arise.

  However, Taiwan has bipartisan support from the US in the US Congress and the White House, thanks to the Taiwan Relations Act, he said.

  Although a US-Taiwan Business Council’s report showed that the dollar amount of US arms sales to Taiwan has been decreasing under US President Joe Biden’s administration, that was due to Taipei’s strategic shift to asymmetric defense, in which smaller and less expensive weapons such as drones are more useful, Yui said.

  Taiwan-US cooperation to resolve issues with the delayed delivery of weapons is “an ongoing process” and is “very close, very open ... and very fluid,” he added.

  Taiwan has been increasingly supported by “not only the US, but also other like-minded countries,” such as Australia, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the UK, who support freedom of navigation in the Taiwan Strait, he said.

  These like-minded countries had expressed “their disagreement with China’s claim” that the Strait is part of its “internal waters,” he said.

  Europe’s attitude toward Taiwan has also markedly changed since last year, Yui said.

  “More and more European countries are willing to deal with Taiwan separately from the People’s Republic of China [PRC]... We were sort of an attachment to the Chinese issue. Not anymore,” the site quoted him as saying.

  The EU changed its view of Taiwan as it started to look at China differently, particularly after Beijing started to “weaponize trade” by forbidding imports from Lithuania to punish the EU member for opening representative offices with Taiwan in 2021, he said.

  The PRC “forgot that Lithuania is a member of the EU. So instead of hitting a very small country ... actually they [the PRC] hit a wall of the EU,” he said.

  The bond between Taiwan and like-minded partners such as the US and EU countries is strengthening, because of shared values and principles — such as the respect of human rights, democracy and freedoms, Yui said.

  “The world will not stand by and let Taiwan face these threats alone,” he said, adding that Taiwan is willing to defend itself.

  “We are determined to defend our way of life ... because once you taste democracy, people will not go back,” he said.
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