Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

US opposes Chinese coercion

Taipei Times

US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday said that Washington wanted to make sure that Taiwan could not be coerced by China to do things “against the will of its people.”

Blinken said that he had very good talks with president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) at the US Department of State last summer and that “we have strongly encouraged the Chinese to engage with her and to engage with Taiwan.”

Ma and KMT’s selective tough stance

Taipei Times Editorial

President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) unusually strongly worded statement on Wednesday denouncing the Japan Coast Guard’s seizure of a Taiwanese fishing boat stands in stark contrast to his lukewarm attitude over the deportation of Taiwanese from Kenya to China earlier this month.

In the statement, Ma vowed to take immediate concrete measures to safeguard Taiwan’s fishing rights within a range of 12 to 200 nautical miles (22.2km to 370.4km) around the uninhabited Okinotori atoll, calling it the high seas.

On legislating transitional justice

Huang Cheng-yi (黃丞儀) and Yeh Hung-ling (葉虹靈)

For several consecutive days, the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) legislative caucus has been blocking legislation for the promotion of transitional justice proposed by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). They first withdrew en masse from voting on the draft act, then proposed that it be reconsidered. In the end, the KMT was too few in numbers, and the party lost the vote on whether the proposal should be reconsidered before being submitted to the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee by 68 votes against 25.

Taiwan among nations targeted by US exercises

Taiwan Tati Cultural & Educational Foundation

A US FA-18 jet lands on the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier in the South China Sea on April 15.
Photo: AP

The US military conducted “freedom of navigation” operations against 13 countries last year, including Taiwan, and several to challenge China’s claims in the South and East China seas, according to an annual Pentagon report released on Monday.

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