Just days after Senator Todd Young’s delegation returned from a visit with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, the new Speaker of the US House, Kevin McCarthy, announced that he will visit the island nation this spring. [Young’s speech in Taiwan can be found below.]
“I think every member of Congress should visit Taiwan,” said Young, who has penned legislation to counter China’s semiconductor industry and economic coercion by strengthening trade and commerce ties with allies. “From the speaker of the House to newly minted freshmen … I think they should all go to Taiwan. Their visits are going to be very well received.”
Days before Young’s trip, one of his top staffers received a threatening email from the Chinese Embassy. The embassy official urged the senator to discreetly cancel the visit to Taiwan and warned of increased instability in the region if he followed through. The official warned of further damaging relations between the U.S. & China and “send wrong signals” to those who support Taiwan’s independence. The Chinese Communist Party views Taiwan as its own territory under its “One China” policy.*
Several members of Congress received similar messages from Chinese officials in recent months, due to their interest in visiting the island nation or supporting it via legislation. “I think we’ll see more of this as we push back against the Chinese,” Young said. “It’s certainly not going to deter me.”
Young’s determination was clear during his Indo-Pacific tour last week, where he met with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to discuss Chinese aggression toward the nation and with Japanese leaders to talk about how to deter China.
“The next five years [are] especially critical to do everything we can to deter invasion,” the senator said, citing China’s struggles with Covid, its population decrease and other issues as evidence that Beijing’s power is waning.
“I actually have been persuaded,” Young warned, “that the near term is the more dangerous window.”
Remember last summer when Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she was considering a trip to Taiwan? The very fact that the Speaker of the US House of Representatives MAY visit Taiwan had the Chinese president seeing red (pun intended). Joe Biden begged her not to go because he didn’t want his buddies within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to get mad. She ignored him and had a very successful trip. Now it’s Speaker McCarthy’s turn.
After telling Pelosi not to go, Joe Biden ran to the phone, calling Chinese President Xi Jinping, probably begging him not to shoot down her plane. The White House refuses to release the transcript of the call because it would prove yet again that a weak president invites aggression from our enemies. The CCP released theirs. According to their transcript, Xi threatened Biden and America:
"Those who play with fire will perish by it. It is hoped that the US will be clear-eyed about this."
Xi’s threat followed a previous threat by the Chinese Ministry of Defense spokesman who warned “If the United States goes ahead with this, the Chinese military will never watch and do nothing. It will take strong measures to thwart any external interference and separatist plans for ‘Taiwan independence’ and resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
He was referring to the long held delusion that Taiwan is actually a province of China.*
China laughs at America. They know we have an occupant in the White House who is a dementia patient and was put there via massive election fraud. They know we have a wimpy Secretary of State (Blinken) because he sat quietly while being lectured by his Chinese counterpart on “human rights abuses.” And they know America has a Secretary of Defense (Austin) who is preoccupied with turning the once mighty US military into some type of panty-waisted woke dystopia. Even the Russians are laughing at the transgendering indoctrination of American children. They both know Biden’s military is very weak and, 20 years from now, America won’t have a military.
These three visits from high ranking US politicians in less than a year clearly shows that SOME American officials aren’t as lily-livered as Biden and his cabinet. China has been making plans to invade Taiwan since Biden entered the White House. The only thing holding them back is the possibility that America might take military action against them. These visits will have the CCP re-thinking their plans.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy MUST visit Taiwan. America’s honor depends upon it. And Taiwan’s freedom depends upon it, as well.
*The Chinese Communist Party has long maintained that the Taiwanese people are really Chinese people and that Taiwan really belongs to China. Well, that depends upon how one looks at it. Should the American colonies have been forever ruled by England even though Americans wanted to govern themselves? At the time of the American Revolution there were much, much closer ties between Americans and Englishmen than there is today between Taiwanese and Chinese.
BRIEF HISTORY OF TAIWAN
Anthropologists believe humans have lived on the Island of Taiwan for tens of thousands of years. By 3000 BC they had established an agrarian culture. DNA shows that these first inhabitants share the same ancestors as the original Hawaiians and other cultures around the South Pacific. They spoke an early form of Austronesian languages.
There were two waves of migrants from the Chinese Empire’s southeastern provinces in the 1600s: 1) the ethnic Holko who still speak the Hokkien language and 2) the Hakka people who still maintain their distinct identity and language in today’s Taiwan.
During this period the Island of Taiwan was nominally part of the Chinese Empire. Taiwan & China are separated by 110 miles of ocean called the Strait of Taiwan. The Chinese government had little actual control over Taiwan and its people due to the distance and the poor travel & communication conditions of the day. The Taiwanese were mostly free to make their own decisions and run their own affairs.
SPOILS OF WAR: CHINA GAVE TAIWAN TO JAPAN
The Chinese government long considered Taiwan useless, referring to it as a place where “flowers don’t bloom and birds don’t shit.” In reality, Taiwan is a beautiful land, covered with forests, mountains, rivers, lakes, flowers, many species of birds and numerous unique animals, including the Mei Hua Lu deer. As a Portuguese ship approached the island around 1542-44, the sailors called out “Ilha Formosa,” which means “beautiful island.”
After defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, Empress Dowager Cixi quickly ceded Taiwan to the Empire of Japan in 1895. Japan occupied Taiwan until their own defeat in WWII, at which time China’s nationalist government took nominal control of the island. Following defeat by Mao’s Red Army, the president of the nationalist government, Chiang Kai-shek, brought what was left of his army to Taiwan in 1949 and declared martial law.
Chiang’s soldiers slaughtered 18,000 to 28,000 Taiwanese, most of whom were deemed “too educated.” They assassinated the only Harvard-educated man, along with doctors, professors, lawyers, newspaper editors, etc.
Chiang Kai Shek passed away in 1975 and his son took over as ruler. His son passed away in 1988. By that time the Taiwanese people were eager to rule themselves and the dictatorship collapsed. Taiwan became a democracy in 1989. Both their economy and democracy are now thriving, and the Taiwanese people don’t want to be taken over by China. They don’t want to live under the oppression of Communism.
Senator Young’s Speech in Taiwan:
”Thank you, Madam President, and to the entire delegation. I am grateful for hosting me and the members of my team for the first time to this wonderful country. I was struck immediately upon landing by the friendly nature of the country, by your proud history, and your impressive efforts to unleash the talents and energies of your people.
You are a thriving democracy, and [there is a] stark contrast between your country here and the authoritarian regime across the Taiwan Strait. You should know that I am here for a number of reasons, but more than anything else, to reassure you that Republicans and Democrats and the United States Congress intend to continue to do whatever we can to support, to broaden, to strengthen, and deepen the US-Taiwan relationship.
The CHIPS and Science Act is of particular interest to me, as the Republican lead on this important legislation in the United States Congress. This is, as the president has indicated, a technological and business effort to deepen the relations between our countries. I'm here to learn more about how we can continue to do that, so we can sell more chips, employ more people, create more opportunities and more linkages between the United States and Taiwan and many other countries moving forward. That will benefit all of us.
At a personal level, as the United States Senator from the state of Indiana, I'm proud of the US-Taiwan relationship and the Indiana-Taiwan relationship. Indianapolis, as the president indicated, has long ago established a sister city relationship with Taipei. The state of Indiana established a sister state relationship with Taiwan soon thereafter.
Our values and shared interests are quite obvious, look only at the business relationships. A recently established relationship with MediaTek is important to both of our people, as is the relationship between many of your world class semiconductor companies and Purdue University, where Purdue continues to build out an impressive degree program focused exclusively on semiconductor research, design, and production.
The United States is of course a robust democracy, and in democracies we often have principled disagreements between our people. We will see some of those disagreements in the coming couple of years because we have divided government. But make no mistake, there is something that Republicans and Democrats alike are unified on, and will be unified with the next two years and beyond, that is the importance of supporting the US-Taiwan relationship and holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable.
I will look forward to the discussion with President Tsai today. She indicated a number of areas that were also on my list as priorities to discuss, including a potential tax agreement to provide more favorable treatment to Taiwan-based businesses, continued military cooperation, and of course ensuring that we cooperate every step of the way with Taiwan as we implement the CHIPS and Science Act. I want to wish the people of Taiwan a Happy Lunar New Year.”
