Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Lawmakers on Monday said that plans to move the legislature to Taichung were still being considered, but experts have raised concerns about the logistics.

Such a move has been discussed since at least 2004. In 2012, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) — who was a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator at the time — called for Taichung to be made the nation’s second capital.

Lin said that moving the Legislative Yuan would better balance national development and allow the land occupied by the legislature in Taipei to return to being a school, its original purpose.

Until the administration of US President Donald Trump, Washington had always been of two minds regarding Taiwan’s importance to US national interest.

In the post-World War II period, when Taiwan was controlled by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), a US ally, but a harsh dictator, then-US president Harry Truman’s administration saw no need to get in a war with China over the nation.

In 1949 and 1950, speeches by US General Douglas MacArthur and then-US secretary of state Dean Acheson excluded Taiwan (and South Korea) from the US Pacific defense perimeter, and the US Navy was removed from the Taiwan Strait and nearby waters.