{"id":4454,"date":"2022-10-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-08T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/archives\/4454"},"modified":"2022-10-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-10-08T07:00:00","slug":"478-10-8-dr-david-wordman-we-need-more-sensible-legislators-like-markey-et-al-on-taiwan-policy-act-s-4428","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/2022\/4454\/","title":{"rendered":"#478 10\/8\u00a0 Dr. David Wordman\u00a0We Need More Sensible Legislators Like Markey et al on Taiwan Policy Act (S. 4428)"},"content":{"rendered":"
 
The Senate Bill, S. 4428 – Taiwan Policy Act is a product of complex bipartisan political wave and a long-time lobbying force pushing for Taiwan Independence. There was a pro-Taiwan lobbying effort in the U.S. since 1996 when Lee Deng Hui betrayed the KMT party\u2019s one China policy. Lee\u2019s visit to and speech at Cornell University in 1996 in fact created a military fiasco in the Taiwan Strait that the U.S. had to put out the fire. The U.S. Administration in the subsequent two decades had to constrain the Taiwan government to adhere to the one China principle which is recognized by the U.S. as the foundation for U.S.-China formal diplomatic relation. Chen Shui Bien Administration (2001-2008) reluctantly obliged (President Bush called him troublemaker) and the following Ma Yin-Jiou Administration (2009-2016) made significant improvement in the cross-strait relationship. Then Tsai Yin Wen won the election in 2016 on an ambiguous promise of \u201cMaintaining Current Status\u201d (peaceful and huge trade surplus with Mainland China) but turned 180 degrees to disengage with Mainland China and to promote an anti-China policy after she took office.
 
The above developments coincided with the cycles of the U.S. presidential elections, exactly from 2008, 2016 through 2020-22 election cycles. Trump won in 2016 by advocating \u201cmake America great again\u201d and blame the U.S. problems on China\u2019s rise: stealing American jobs, making trade surplus and threatening U.S. securities with rapid development. This political wave was so strong, though irrationally fanned, when Joe Biden challenged Trump in 2020 presidential election, he had to ride on the anti-China wave and step on the red lines defined an ambiguous U.S.-Taiwan relation. Hence the \u201ctargeting China\u201d policy rose in Biden\u2019s Administration with amplification. The U.S. Administration and Congress have jointly created a set of legislations and policies to maintain a trade war and a sanction policy on technologies and hi-tech products against China. Diplomatically, the U.S. is lobbying her Allie\u2019s to join in the \u2018targeting China\u2019 effort. After exhausting the \u2018Hong Kong card\u2019 and spending the \u2018Xinjiang card\u2019 with no severe damage to China, the \u2018Taiwan Card\u2019 is now used like a rash, tumor or cancer to hurt, retard or suffocate China\u2019s rapid development in economy and many other domains, including space. Mainland China\u2019s extreme sensitivity to the Taiwan unification issue was largely regarded exploitable by U.S. political scholars and politicians.
 
S. 4428 – Taiwan Policy Act is sponsored by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ, Chairman of FRC) and cosponsored by Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on June 14, 2022 after hearings held since December 2021. Menendez argued that Taiwan is a successful and prosperous democracy which we should cherish but he failed to recognize that Taiwan\u2019s success was built on a generous surplus trade with Mainland China (Surplus equals $133.84B, 42% of Taiwan\u2019s export to China is $188.9B and only 10% of export is to the U.S.)The bill essentially contains three main thrusts, one, symbolically raises Taiwan\u2019s status by suggesting changing Taiwan\u2019s diplomatic office name and statue, two, helps Taiwan to engage in the international organizations and three, supports Taiwan defense by beefing up Taiwan\u2019s ammunition reserve and weapons as well as offering military training and strategic guidance. This bill was passed by Senate FRC by 17:5 with some amendments of toning down the provocative diplomatic office name change but increasing the military reserve support to an amount of $6.5B that can be written off over five years. These amendments appeared to be a response to the unspecified concerns from White House and a few sensible Senators’ critical comments. Ed Markey (D-Mass), who led a congressional delegate visiting Taiwan (August 14-15, 2022) right after the controversial visit by Nancy Pelosi, feared the bill would undermine strategic ambiguity. He seemed to have understood the sentiments of Taiwan people by saying that \u201cIt is the people living on Taiwan who are facing the daily realities \u2026 and will be the ones targeted in reaction to changes in U.S. policies. We should not take actions that put Taiwan at increased risk, with little reward.\u201d Markey also made a sensible remark, “do everything we can to avoid a situation that could draw two nuclear-armed countries into a conflict.” We need more sensible Senators and Congressmen to work on legislations.
 
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), among four Democratic no votes, wants to revise Taiwan policy but in a way that \u201cdoesn\u2019t precipitate a conflict. He is very honest about military support and security guarantee: \u201cMy interest is in increasing the material support we give to Taiwan. I\u2019m less enthusiastic about changes in law that would provide formal or quasi recognition to the government in Taiwan for changes that would push us closer to a security guarantee,\u201d Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) both did not support the bill because of the \u2018symbolic change\u2019 issue and Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) also voted against the bill with criticism that the proposal is a move toward strategic clarity and a potential reversal of the One China policy. \u201cThis is not a time to radically change long-standing policy \u2026 without an appreciation of the consequences that may follow,\u201d Paul said. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) voted in favor of the bill but commented that the original version was \u201ctoo forward leaning and potentially provocative.\u201d Dave DeCamp, news editor at Antiwar.com, in a tweet expressed that, the bill, if passed, “will be the most radical change in U.S. policy toward Taiwan since the 1970s and will make war much more likely.”
 
As reported in Gov\/track.US, the Taiwan Policy Act has a 14% chance of being enacted into law predicted by Skopos Labs, an AI research entity. This bill was first introduced on June 16, 2022 by sponsor Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and cosponsor Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The committee then held two meetings on July 19th and August 3rd respectively on the bill and ordered to report to the Senate Chamber on September 14th, after the 17:5 passing vote, an updated version was produced on September 15th. This bill will be scheduled on Senate agenda for a discussion and debate. After Senate approval, a final version will be sent to the House for committee and chamber review. The House final version will go through a joint-chamber review, revision and approval before sending the final to the White House for President\u2019s acceptance or rejection. Hence, the 14% chance of enacting S. 4428 into law is quite logical. However, since the consequence of the enactment of this bill is extremely dangerous, not only with possibility of breaking the U.S.-China diplomatic relations but also with a chance of creating a devastating war in the Taiwan Strait forcing the U.S. to enter into an un-winnable war or lose credibility. This author sincerely urges every American citizen to write to his or her Senators and Congressman or women of the 117th session of Congress and all candidates running for the 118th Congress to make effort to squash this war-triggering bill in their sessions. The people in Taiwan do not want to turn Taiwan into another Ukraine!<\/p>\n

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 The Senate Bill, S. 4428 – Taiwan Policy Act is a product of complex bipartisan political wave and a long-time lobbying force pushing for Taiwan Independence. There was a pro-Taiwan lobbying effort in the U.S. since 1996 when Lee Deng Hui betrayed the KMT party\u2019s one China policy. Lee\u2019s visit to and speech at Cornell University in 1996 in fact created a military fiasco in the Taiwan Strait that the U.S. had to put out the fire. The U.S. Administration in the subsequent two decades had to constrain the Taiwan government to adhere to the one China principle which is recognized by the U.S. as the foundation for U.S.-China formal diplomatic relation. Chen Shui Bien Administration (2001-2008) reluctantly obliged (President Bush called him troublemaker) and the following Ma Yin-Jiou Administration (2009-2016) made significant improvement in the cross-strait relationship. Then Tsai Yin Wen won the election in 2016 on an ambiguous …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[121],"class_list":["post-4454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-dr-david-wordman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}