Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

WikiLeaks cable from Beijing reveals U.S. discussion about Taiwan defense

Michael Richardson

Taiwan observers have been watching the daily WikiLeaks releases of U.S. diplomatic cables for documents in a large cache of messages from the American Institute in Taiwan, the defacto embassy of the United States. The United States has never recognized the sovereignty of the Republic of China in-exile over Taiwan, thus no embassy.

The United States is the “principal occupying Power” of Taiwan under the San Francisco Peace Treaty that officially ended World War II with Japan. At the end of the war the United States installed the embattled Republic of China as the occupation government to control the former Japanese territory. Six decades of “strategic ambiguity” have left the island under control by the Chinese Nationalist government, barred from the United Nations, and under threat of invasion from the People’s Republic of China.

First WikiLeaks cable from AIT in Taipei is about weapons export controls

Michael Richardson

WikiLeaks has released the first of its 3,456 diplomatic cables from the American Institute in Taiwan, the defacto U.S. embassy. The unclassified cable from Taipei to Washington went to the State Department and the Department of Energy.

Marked “Sensitive” and “For Official Use Only” the document was created August 13, 2009, and concerns monthly export control reports. The cable discusses a July 21, 2009 meeting with Lin Sheng-Chung, the vice-minister of the Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Former first lady set for medical evaluation for jail

Taipei Times

Former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) has been ordered to report to Taichung Prison’s Pei Teh Hospital next Friday to undergo an evaluation to see if she is well enough to serve a lengthy jail sentence, her son said yesterday.

Chen Chih-chung (陳致中) said his family was deeply worried about the decision by judicial authorities because his mother, who is paralyzed from the waist down, cannot care for herself on a daily basis.

Spy allegations ‘deadly serious,’ US expert says

Taipei Times

A top US expert on Asian military affairs said that espionage allegations against Major General Lo Hsien-che (羅賢哲) of Taiwan were “deadly serious” and potentially “very damaging.”

Richard Fisher, a senior fellow at the Washington-based International Assessment and Strategy Center, said it was of “utmost importance” that Taiwan and the US “be far better informed of the range of current and future developing threats from China.”

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