Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The government’s response to China’s new residency permit cards for Taiwanese shows that it is taking the issue too lightly and fails to grasp the possible political ramifications.

As of Monday last week, 22,000 Taiwanese had applied for the cards, which were launched on Sept. 1, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman An Fengshan (安峰山) said on Wednesday last week.

By the simple gesture of inviting President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to visit NASA’s Houston Space Center on Aug. 19, Taiwan and the US acknowledged their partnership in space. With the visit, Taipei and Washington also seized the future, opening the door to new levels of space cooperation, which could transform Taiwan’s economic, security and even political future.

Although the National Space Organization in Hsinchu was not formed until 1991, Tsai’s NASA visit in a way marked the culmination of more than 20 years of Taiwan-US space cooperation, which started with the January 1999 launch of Taiwan’s Formosat-1 observation satellite from Florida’s Cape Canaveral.