Analysis: Lai Reportedly Denied a Stopover in U.S.

TaiwanPlus News

Taiwan's Presidential Office says President Lai Ching-te has no plans for an overseas trip, amid reports that the U.S. blocked Taiwan from making a stopover in the U.S. on the way to visit Latin American allies. TaiwanPlus speaks with Yang Kuang-shun, co-founder of U.S. Taiwan Watch, for his analysis.

Transcript

00:00Paraguay's president had announced that Taiwan President Lai Qingde would be visiting the country

00:04and media outlets have reported that the trip would also include visits to Guatemala and Belize

00:09as well as stopovers in the U.S. But Monday the presidential office put out a statement saying

00:14the president has no overseas plans because Taiwan is still recovering from recent typhoons and is

00:19still negotiating tariffs with the U.S. Why do you think that the Taiwan president may have called

00:24off plans for an overseas visit? First of all this trip was announced by Paraguayan president

00:32not by neither Taiwanese or an American government so I believe that this arrangement suggests that

00:42there was there was a plan for visiting Paraguay but it is not set because visiting Paraguay or any

00:52Latin American allies would definitely transit in U.S. and that means that there should be some

01:01arrangement or understanding between Taipei and Washington and it was not done. Do you think

01:07that his decision not to travel was influenced by domestic factors like the natural disasters that

01:12the presidential office mentioned? Those issues are certainly factors. Obviously it is the moment

01:20that the light administration wish to respond to the domestic public grievances rather than to spore

01:30diplomatically. So the natural disaster like a like a typhoon has already generated quite an amount of

01:40of public grievances which became a point for the opposition party to question the governors of the light administration.

01:56So another element of all this that's getting a lot of attention right now is that the Financial Times

02:00published a report citing sources familiar with the situation saying that the U.S. had blocked Taiwan from

02:06doing a stopover in New York and that that was why he had called off travel plans. If this is true,

02:12do you see this as a change or a setback to Taiwan U.S. relations given that the U.S. has allowed these

02:17kinds of stopovers before? I don't think that there will be a visit or a transit at that level for now

02:25but it didn't it didn't really mean that there is a fundamental change in the Taiwan U.S. relations.

02:32The nature of Taiwan U.S. relations looks more to the increase for improvements of interactions or

02:44engagement in more with more issues with sustenance like for example we as we can see there is some

02:53American military observers in Taiwan's annual Hanguang exercises and there's some report about the

03:00potential U.S. arms deals with Taiwan and the U.S. and just like I mentioned there's there there can be

03:12the trade negotiations is still ongoing so that is the that is the nature of Taiwan U.S. relation which

03:20is I have improved over the years that I will look more to rather than rather than only looking at the high

03:30level visits high level meeting or even high level meeting and it's more than that right

Category

Transcript

Recommended