‘BE MORE PRACTICAL’: Beijing’s insistence on the ‘1992 consensus’ and ‘one China’ as the basis for exchanges is detrimental to cross-strait relations, Chiu Tai-san said/ Staff writer, with CNA
Last week the news broke that Time magazine selected Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) as one of the global top 100 emerging leaders, “individuals who are shaping the future.” Chiang, who will be 48 in a couple of weeks, heads a dying former authoritarian party that opposes independence for Taiwan and advocates annexing it to China, and is not so much shaping the future as trying to prevent it from happening.
Johnny Chiang? Can the reader name any of the half-dozen or so interim chairs the KMT has had since Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) resigned in 2005?
Comically,
US warship sails through Strait, first under Biden
By Aaron Tu and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
US Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS
John S. McCain yesterday transited through the Taiwan Strait, a first for US President Joe Biden’s administration and for the year, official sources said.
The Ministry of National Defense in a statement confirmed the passage of a US warship believed to be conducting a routine navigation mission, but did not give details.
The government usually does not reveal the name of a US warship sailing through the Strait or its class.
The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain conducts a routine transit of the Taiwan Strait yesterday.
US, China heading for naval arms race: report
By Aaron Tu and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer
The US is expediting efforts to overhaul its navy and doctrine in light of growing Chinese ambitions for a “blue-water” navy, a precursor to a more obvious “arms race” between the US and China, according to an article in Taiwanese think tank the Institute for National Defense and Security Research’s National Security Journal.
A blue-water navy is a maritime force capable of operating globally.
The article, written by Chen Liang-chih (陳亮智), cited Navigation Plan 2021 presented by US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday at the Surface Navy Association Symposium on Jan. 11, which stated that “our actions in this decade will set the maritime balance of power for the rest of the century.”