Exclusive | Bipartisan leaders in Congress introduce bill reaffirming US support for Taiwan
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Bipartisan foreign policy leaders in Congress introduced a resolution on Thursday reaffirming US support for Taiwan — and countering pressure from China to assume complete sovereignty over the island.The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee floated the bill to cut against Beijing’s “One China Principle” and other efforts aimed at thwarting Taiwan’s diplomatic participation in international relations.“Let me make one thing very clear: America does not recognize China’s claim over Taiwan,” said Sen.James Risch (R-Idaho), who chairs the Foreign Relations panel.“Once again, the Chinese government has attempted to trick the world and subvert the United Nations for its own purposes – but we see these malign tactics and stand in support of our friends in Taiwan,” he added. The bill – co-sponsored by Sen.
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ranking member of the committee, as well as Sen.Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) – takes issue with the “harmful conflation of China’s ‘One China Principle’ and the United States’ ‘One China Policy.’”The Chinese Communist Party’s “One China Principle” holds that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and that the island will one day be unified with the mainland. Meanwhile, the “One China Policy” or Resolution 2758, while not endorsing Beijing’s position, acknowledges that there is only one Chinese government and steers the US away from having official diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The lawmakers argue that the CCP has improperly used a 1971 United Nations resolution granting the People’s Republic a seat in the assembly to lay claim to the breakaway island. “In recent years, the [People’s Republic of China] has linked Resolution 2758 with its ‘One China Principle’ and has claimed that Resolution 2758 addresses the matter of sovereignty over Taiwan … Resolution 2758 did not endorse and is not equivalent to the ‘One China Pr...