Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

China pressures lawmakers over IPAC

Taipei Times

Chinese diplomats are pressuring lawmakers from at least six countries not to attend a China-focused summit in Taiwan, participants said.

Politicians in Bolivia, Colombia, Slovakia, North Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and one other Asian country that declined to be named, say they are receiving texts, calls and urgent requests for meetings that would conflict with their plans to travel to Taipei, in what they describe as efforts to isolate Taiwan.

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) summit officially begins tomorrow. The alliance is a group of hundreds of lawmakers from 35 countries concerned about how democracies approach Beijing.

Resilience improving: US official

Taipei Times

Taiwan and the US are improving resilience and innovating operational concepts to maintain the capability to deter Beijing from attacking across the Taiwan Strait, a senior US defense official said on Wednesday.

Keeping Taiwan-US deterrence capabilities strong through improving bilateral cooperation has been a constant task for the US government, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner told the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

A war in the Taiwan Strait is not imminent or inevitable, he said, citing US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Filling Pacific islands banking gap

Fang Kai-hung 方凱弘

China has been rapidly expanding its banking operations in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in the context of a gradual withdrawal by Western banks.

For example, after Australia’s Bendigo and Adelaide Bank announced its plan to withdraw from Nauru, Bank of China, which has opened offices across the region, signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation with the Nauruan government. This quick reaction raises worries that China might have a broader hidden agenda.

The withdrawal of Western banks is partly due to increasingly stringent financial supervision requirements.

KMT, TPP are instigating crisis

Taipei Times Editorial

The first session of the 11th Legislative Yuan’s four-year term ended on Tuesday, and 55 bills were passed in the session, which is the fewest bills passed in one session in 12 years.

However, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) said the session delivered a “very good result,” despite there being fights and arguments in this break-in session for many newly elected legislators.

In the last two days of the session, lawmakers rushed to pass a slew of resolutions and bills, mainly proposed by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators, who have a combined majority in the legislature.

More Articles...