Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Wind down nation’s honor guards

Teng Hon-yuan 鄧鴻源

On July 15, the military honor guards’ “handover ceremony” at the Chiang Kai-shek (CKS) Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂) was performed outdoors for the first time on Democracy Boulevard outside the main hall — rather than in front of former president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) statue inside the main hall.

The 15-minute ceremony is performed once every hour on the hour from 9am to 5pm on the boulevard.

However, the relocation has caused much criticism, with some people saying the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government’s move is “interfering with the military honor guards.”

China pressures lawmakers over IPAC

Taipei Times

Chinese diplomats are pressuring lawmakers from at least six countries not to attend a China-focused summit in Taiwan, participants said.

Politicians in Bolivia, Colombia, Slovakia, North Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and one other Asian country that declined to be named, say they are receiving texts, calls and urgent requests for meetings that would conflict with their plans to travel to Taipei, in what they describe as efforts to isolate Taiwan.

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) summit officially begins tomorrow. The alliance is a group of hundreds of lawmakers from 35 countries concerned about how democracies approach Beijing.

Resilience improving: US official

Taipei Times

Taiwan and the US are improving resilience and innovating operational concepts to maintain the capability to deter Beijing from attacking across the Taiwan Strait, a senior US defense official said on Wednesday.

Keeping Taiwan-US deterrence capabilities strong through improving bilateral cooperation has been a constant task for the US government, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner told the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

A war in the Taiwan Strait is not imminent or inevitable, he said, citing US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Filling Pacific islands banking gap

Fang Kai-hung 方凱弘

China has been rapidly expanding its banking operations in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in the context of a gradual withdrawal by Western banks.

For example, after Australia’s Bendigo and Adelaide Bank announced its plan to withdraw from Nauru, Bank of China, which has opened offices across the region, signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation with the Nauruan government. This quick reaction raises worries that China might have a broader hidden agenda.

The withdrawal of Western banks is partly due to increasingly stringent financial supervision requirements.

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