Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The US should normalize relations with Taiwan “as much as possible,” a former senior congressional official said.

Gary Schmitt, a former staff director of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence who is now an academic at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), said Washington should overturn the self-imposed strictures on relations that are required neither by domestic nor international law.

During Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) visit to Japan, her hosts afforded her a degree of courtesy almost equivalent to the treatment she received during her visit to the US.

Japanese media outlets reported that Tsai had a secret meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but the existence of such a meeting has not been confirmed, just like there was no confirmation of her alleged meeting with US National Security Adviser Susan Rice in Washington.