Following US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, tensions in the region seem set to escalate. Although in a recent Pentagon briefing, US government spokespersons claimed that they had anticipated China’s moves, China’s actions still came as a surprise...
American leftist magazine Jacobin continues to plumb the depths of bad writing on Taiwan that does not bother to consult Taiwanese voices about their own future, with a recent article by Chicago-based writer Branko Marcetic. Instead of anything like, say, speaking to Taiwanese to see what they think of the odds of conflict with China are, what one instead sees is the usual insularity of western leftists who are more concerned with projecting the specter of American empire onto the non-western world to self-flagellate about themselves rather than finding pragmatic solutions to avoid conflict...
It remains opaque as to whether military drilling by China around Taiwan will continue in the coming days. Namely, although the People’s Liberation Army initially announced that its four days of live-fire drills would end on Sunday, yesterday it announced that military exercises in the area would continue. The drills are an escalation for the Chinese military, seeing as they take place closer to Taiwan than took place during the Third Taiwan Straits Crisis...
Today was the first day of live-fire drills conducted by the People’s Liberation Army in maritime areas around Taiwan. The drills are as close as 20 kilometers to metropolises such as Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s major southern port city, and are nine kilometers away from the island of Little Liuqiu. Another zone was added by the Maritime and Port Bureau for ships to avoid during the drilling, which is to last until Sunday, bringing the number of such zones to 7...
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which began yesterday after she arrived at Songshan Airport at 10:43 PM and ended today around 4:45 PM, has been eventful. Pelosi is the highest-ranking US elected official to visit Taiwan in a quarter of a century, the last such visit having been Newt Gingrich’s visit in 1997...
Former National Security Council secretary-general Ting Yu-chou criticized the four-month draft in recent public comments. The comments were made by Ting, who served as secretary-general of the NSC under the Chen administration, at a book launch by Chang Rong-feng. Chang was a former Lee Teng-hui administration security official...
The prospect of a Nancy Pelosi visit to Taiwan has continued to be a divisive notion, with a number of warnings in international media about the dangers of such a visit. Pelosi is the US House Speaker. The significance of the visit can be seen in that she is third in succession to the presidency, after the vice president...
A scoop by the Financial Times on Tuesday reported that US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi planned to visit Taiwan next month. However, US president Joe Biden surprised today with apparent off-the-cuff comments suggesting that his administration viewed the Pelosi visit as a bad idea. When asked about the prospect of a Pelosi visit, Biden stated, “Well, I think that the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now. But I don’t know what the status of it is”...
The annual meeting of the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization, is currently taking place from May 22nd to May 28th. Taiwan was allowed to participate in the WHO as an observer from 2009 to 2016 under the Ma administration. But after the Tsai administration took power, Taiwan was not allowed to participate, as a result of Chinese pressure. As with past years, Taiwan has sought to call attention to its exclusion from the WHA and WHO, to call for its inclusion as an observer. Nevertheless, efforts to gain admittance to the WHA have been comparatively quiet this year, compared to past years....
