Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Democrats must stand up to China

Gray Sergeant

The election of Donald Trump as 45th president of the US has been a mixed blessing for longstanding critics of Washington’s engagement policy regarding Beijing.

As I have argued before in the Taipei Times, the president himself and the people whom he chooses to surround himself with send mixed signals. From hawkish posturing to heaping on nauseating levels of praise, the current US administration’s approach to China covers the spectrum.

Leaked CCP files document mass detentions

Taipei Times

A security camera hangs over a street in a renovated section of the Old City in Kashgar, Xinjiang, China, on Sept. 6 last year.
Photo: Reuters

A rare and huge leak of Chinese government documents has shed new light on a security crackdown on Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region, where Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) ordered officials to act with “absolutely no mercy” against separatism and extremism, the New York Times reported.

US port calls benefit Taiwan

Taipei Times Editorial

The Ministry of National Defense on Wednesday confirmed that a US warship had earlier in the week sailed through the Taiwan Strait, the ninth such transit this year.

The US Seventh Fleet said that the transits were part of “operations in support of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region,” while analysts suggested that the transits might be in response to China’s increased pressure on Taiwan.

Reading between the lines

Taipei Times Editorial

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on Thursday published its Annual Report to Congress, which should make for interesting reading not only in Washington, but also in Taipei — in the Presidential Office, the ministries of foreign affairs and national defense, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and elsewhere — especially chapters 5 and 6, which cover Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The commission’s members are not wearing the West’s decades-old blinders — that engagement with China could lead to meaningful reform — but see that Beijing has become a clear threat to democracy not just in Asia, but around the world.

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