Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Diluted agreement appeases China

Taipei Times Editorials

The US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Wednesday approved the proposed Taiwan policy act (TPA) with a 17-5 bipartisan vote, after some of the bill’s more controversial proposals were removed.

US Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who was the bill’s initiator, said the removed proposals were only “minor” compared with the bill’s core defense proposals, which authorize US$6.5 billion in grants to Taiwan for arms purchases over a five-year period.

Deconstructing the Taiwan question

Jerome Keating

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has no legitimate claim to Taiwan despite the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) constant harping on.

The CCP used US of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan as a pretext to demonstrate that it could reach the nation with its missiles, as well as present its innocuous white paper on “the Taiwan question.”

The Taiwan question has been around for a long time. It comes up whenever any power, colonial or otherwise, has ambitions on the nation and needs a formula, even terra nullius, to justify its actions. Thus the CCP’s “question” needs its own deconstructing.

Bill to restructure US’ Taiwan policy

Taipei Times

U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, speaks during a hearing in Washington, April 26, 2022.
Photo: Reuters

A bill described by its sponsors as “the most comprehensive restructuring of US policy toward Taiwan since the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979,” was expected to receive bipartisan support at a committee hearing yesterday, one of its initiators said on Tuesday.

“I think we will have a strong bipartisan vote tomorrow that we’re working on,” US Senator Bob Menendez said a day before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Menendez chairs, was to mark up the draft Taiwan policy act (TPA).

Realizing a ‘Taiwanese standpoint’

Lee Min-yung 李敏勇

The end of World War II in 1945 marked the end of Japan’s colonial rule over Taiwan. Instead of becoming independent as the Koreas did, Taiwan was occupied by the Republic of China (ROC).

At first, it was ruled in a quasi-colonial fashion by the Taiwan provincial administration of then-chief executive Chen Yi (陳儀). The Taiwan Provincial Government was established in 1947, following the 228 Incident. In 1949, the ROC was ousted from China by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), creating a situation in which the rival Chinas of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faced each other across the Taiwan Strait. The two parties maintained a “Chinese standpoint” with regard to Taiwan. In historical terms, this was a tragic beginning to a complex situation that has dragged on for more than 70 years.

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