Taiwan needs US weapons for self-defense as threat from China grows, says diplomat

WASHINGTON: Taiwan needs to purchase American weapons to ensure its self-defense in the face of a growing threat from Beijing, the island’s top diplomat in the US said, adding that he has seen no change in Washington’s policy toward the self-governing island that China claims as its own.

A $14-billion arms sale package to Taiwan is still in limbo after President Donald Trump returned from Beijing in May and said he had discussed the proposal “in great detail” with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, heightening anxieties in Taiwan and raising concerns among lawmakers on the Capitol Hill.

“We need those arms for defensive purposes,” Alexander Yui Tah-ray, who heads the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US, told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday in Washington. “We’re trying to increase our defense expenditure. We try to increase our ability to defend ourselves better and survive times of crisis.”

The United States, like most countries, does not officially recognize Taiwan as a country. China prohibits any state it has diplomatic relations with from having formal ties with Taipei. But the US is the island’s strongest informal backer and arms provider.

Yui, while not formally an ambassador to the US, acts as Taiwan’s top envoy in Washington.

The Trump administration has not moved forward with the $14 billion weapons sale proposal approved by senior lawmakers earlier this year. Trump has described the sale as a “very good negotiating chip” with China.

Washington is obligated by domestic law to provide Taiwan with sufficient hardware to deter aggression from China, which claims sovereignty over the island and vows to seize it, by force if necessary, to achieve what it considers to be unification. Beijing has always opposed US arms sales to Taiwan, which has never been under China’s communist rule.