Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

A different US approach to Taiwan

James Wang 王景弘

Taiwan is the world’s 17th largest trading nation, with aviation routes that extend to all of the world’s major cities. Still, Taiwan’s participation in this year’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Assembly was crudely vetoed by China.

Beijing appears unconcerned with those cross-border issues that are in the common interest of humanity: improving hygiene and safety, cracking down on criminals and global warming. Instead, China’s leaders are preoccupied with suppressing Taiwan at every possible turn in an attempt to force it to accept Beijing’s stance on sovereignty.

China’s fascination with currency

Barry Eichengreen

At the start of this month, China’s currency, the yuan, was added to the basket of currencies that make up the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, or SDR. Previously, the SDR had been defined as a weighted average of the US dollar, euro, British pound and Japanese yen. Now that the yuan has been added, it can claim to be one of just five truly global currencies.

Should we care? The Chinese certainly do. In Beijing, where I was late last month, joining the rarefied SDR club was all people wanted to talk about. (OK, truth be told, they also wanted to talk about Donald Trump.)

Taiwan, the US and a free press

Jerome Keating

Whether one looks at the practice of democracy in Taiwan or in the US, this year will definitely go down as a historic one, if only because of the presidential elections in each nation.

In Taiwan, this year marked the first time in its history that the public elected a female president, namely Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). This happened even though the DPP had been out of power for the previous eight years.

Beijing chasing an unrealistic goal

Taipei Times Editorial

President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) National Day address yesterday contained no surprises regarding her China policy, as she maintained the stance she set in her May 20 inaugural address that “the pledges we made remain unchanged, our goodwill is unchanged, but we will not succumb to pressure from China, and we will not revert to the old path of conflict and confrontation.”

Beijing was most probably “disappointed,” as it had described Tsai’s inaugural address as an “incomplete test” because it did not recognize the so-called “1992 consensus.” It was probably hoping that Tsai might “complete the test” by providing an “answer” it deemed satisfactory.

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