{"id":30041,"date":"2023-02-02T10:05:59","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T10:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/?p=30041"},"modified":"2023-02-02T10:07:53","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T10:07:53","slug":"taiwans-tsai-welcomes-retired-us-admiral-for-china-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/?p=30041","title":{"rendered":"Taiwan&#8217;s Tsai welcomes retired US admiral for China talks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>ABC News:   <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TAIPEI, Taiwan &#8212; Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday welcomed the former head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, who had warned the island could face an invasion from <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/alerts\/Taiwan\" target=\"_blank\">China<\/a> this decade, as the mainland ramps up pressure on the self-governing island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Retired Adm. Phil Davidson, along with a group including colleagues from the U.S. think tank the National Bureau of Asian Research, arrived Monday in the capital Taipei following a string of delegate visits to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/alerts\/Taiwan\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Taiwan<\/a>, which China claims as part of its territory, since tensions with the mainland spiked in August with the visit of then-U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m here to listen and learn from our hosts; thus far, I\u2019ve done both,\u201d he said. \u201cI&#8217;m looking forward to continuing our discussions with President Tsai today and hearing her perspectives on the security <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/alerts\/Environment\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">environment<\/a> and her outlook on U.S.-Taiwan relations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>China\u2019s People\u2019s Liberation Army has stepped up its pressure on Taiwan in the past few years, sending navy vessels and fighter planes near the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Taiwan\u2019s Defense Ministry said Tuesday that 20 Chinese aircraft crossed the central line in the Taiwan Strait \u2014 a long-time unofficial buffer zone between the sides, which separated during a civil war in 1949. It sent 14 other planes in nearby airspace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A day later, Taiwan\u2019s Defense Ministry said 17 Chinese aircraft crossed the median line Wednesday, with a total of 23 planes sent to fly around the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFaced with the expansion of authoritarianism, Taiwan must strengthen our ability to defend ourselves,\u201d she said, pointing to the upcoming extension of mandatory military service that she had just announced in December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tsai thanked Davidson on Thursday for his contributions to the \u201csafety of the Taiwan Straits.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Davidson, while still serving as the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, had warned that China&#8217;s claims over Taiwan were a rising and tangible threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cTaiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before then, and I think the threat is manifest during this decade \u2014 in fact, in the next six years,\u201d he told the Senate Armed Forces Committee in 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ABC News: TAIPEI, Taiwan &#8212; Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday welcomed the former head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, who had warned the island could face an invasion from China this decade, as the mainland ramps up pressure on the self-governing island. Retired Adm. Phil Davidson, along with a group including colleagues from the U.S. think tank the National Bureau of Asian Research, arrived Monday in the capital Taipei following a string of delegate visits to Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory, since tensions with the mainland spiked in August with the visit of then-U.S. Speaker&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30042,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30041"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30044,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30041\/revisions\/30044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}