Taiwan leader: Protect regional stability amid China tension

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Tuesday said her government will defend the self-governing island's freedoms and democratic system amid heightened tensions with rival China, and renewed calls for dialogue that Beijing suspended more than a year ago.

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen delivers a speech during the National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017.  (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

China dismissed the appeal, saying talks could only resume after Tsai endorses Beijing's position that Taiwan is Chinese territory.

In an annual National Day address, Tsai also repeated her position that Taiwan will continue to extend "goodwill" to China, but would neither buckle under Beijing's pressure nor pursue confrontation.

China cut off contact with Tsai's government shortly after her inauguration last year after she declined to back the "one-China principle." Beijing threatens to use force to seize control of the island and has steadily increased diplomatic and economic pressure on Taipei in an attempt to compel Tsai to change her stance.

Performers show their skills during the National Day celebrations in Taipei, Taiwan, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017. Taiwan's independence-leaning government will defend the self-governing island's freedoms and democratic system amid heightened tensions with rival China, President Tsai Ing-wen said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

"We remain committed to maintaining peace and stability both in the Taiwan Strait and across the region," Tsai said, according to an official English translation released by her office.

"Meanwhile, we will continue to safeguard Taiwan's freedom, democracy and way of life, as well as ensure the Taiwanese people's right to decide our own future," she told a crowd of citizens and foreign dignitaries gathered outside the Presidential Office Building in central Taipei.

"And the right of the people of Taiwan to choose their own future will not be affected," she said.

Oct. 10 marks the 1911 founding of the Republic of China, which once ruled on the mainland but was forced to retreat to Taiwan in 1949 after Mao Zedong's Communists swept to power amid civil war against Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists.

Performers show their skills during the National Day celebrations in Taipei, Taiwan, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017. Taiwan's independence-leaning government will defend the self-governing island's freedoms and democratic system amid heightened tensions with rival China, President Tsai Ing-wen said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

Under Tsai's Nationalist predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, the sides signed a series of agreements promoting trade and tourism, while sidestepping tricky political issues. China insists that was only possible because Ma endorsed Beijing's "one-China principle," which it says underpins all dealings with Taiwanese government bodies.

Tsai, leader of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, has called for a continuation of contacts and talks between the two sides while setting aside their political differences.

"As I have stated on many occasions, our goodwill will not change, our commitments will not change, we will not revert to the old path of confrontation, and we will not bow to pressure," Tsai said in her speech. "This has been my consistent position on cross-strait relations."

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, center, Legislative Speaker Su Jia-chyuan, left, and vice President Chen Chien-jen, right, wave to attendants during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying).

In Beijing, the spokesman for the Cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office, Ma Xiaoguang, said the principle that Taiwan and the Chinese mainland form a single Chinese nation remains the "core understanding."

"Only by adhering to the one-China principle and opposing Taiwan independence can relations between the sides develop with peace and stability," Ma said.

Tsai, who has sought to bolster Taiwan's domestic arms industry, devoted much of her speech to the importance of military preparedness, along with moves to raise government efficiency and stimulate the island's high-tech economy.

Protesters of supporting Taiwan's independence stage a rally, in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017. Taiwan's independence-leaning government will defend the self-governing island's freedoms and democratic system amid heightened tensions with rival China, President Tsai Ing-wen said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

"We must strengthen our military capabilities," she said. "Faced with the growing demands of modern warfare, we must ensure that our new-generation military focuses not on quantity, but quality."

In 2015, Tsai's party said its defense policies would generate revenues of up to $13.2 billion and create 8,000 jobs.

Tsai, who won election by a landslide in January last year, also pledged efforts to "find Taiwan's place in the new international order," including renewed outreach to countries in Southeast Asia that have drawn increasingly close to Beijing.

Following Panama's decision in June to break diplomatic relations in favor of China, Taiwan has just 20 remaining official allies, and there are constant fears that more could switch recognition to Beijing.

Protesters of supporting Taiwan's independence stage a rally, in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017. Taiwan's independence-leaning government will defend the self-governing island's freedoms and democratic system amid heightened tensions with rival China, President Tsai Ing-wen said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

Tsai said Taiwan would step up economic relations with the 10 Southeast Asian countries and another eight Asian-Pacific nations that her government considers prime economic development partners. Taiwan calls that mission its "New Southbound Policy."

To increase its influence around Asia, Taiwan is promoting Taiping Island, a disputed South China Sea islet, as a base for regional humanitarian aid, Tsai said. China and Vietnam also claim the tiny islet under Taiwan's control. Rescue crews on the island have previously helped Vietnamese sailors caught in storms.

Tsai said Taiwan plans to open a greenhouse gas monitoring station in the Pratas Islands, another South China Sea chain. She also said Taiwan has started helping Southeast Asian countries fight dengue fever.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House congressional leaders were toiling Thursday on a delicate, bipartisan push toward weekend votes to approve a $95 billion package of foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as well as several other national security policies at a critical moment at home and abroad.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson this week set in motion a plan to advance the package, which has been held up since October by GOP lawmakers resistant to approving more funding for Ukraine's fight against Russia. As the Republican speaker faced an outright rebellion from his right flank and growing threats for his ouster, it became clear that House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries would have to lend help to Johnson every step of the way.

“This is a very important message we are going to send to the world this week, and I'm anxious to get it done,” Johnson said earlier Wednesday announcing his strategy.

The growing momentum for a bipartisanship dynamic, a rarity in the deeply divided Congress, brought rare scenes of Republicans and Democrats working together to assert U.S. standing on the global stage and help American allies. But it also sent Johnson's House Republican majority into fresh rounds of chaos.

Johnson's Republican leadership team, seizing on the opportunity to outflank hardline conservatives with Democratic support, raised the idea of quickly changing the procedural rules to make it harder to oust the speaker from office.

But ultra-conservatives reacted with fury, angrily confronting Johnson on the House floor in a tense scene on Thursday morning. Several suggested they would join the effort to oust Johnson if the rule was changed. By the afternoon, Johnson backed away from the idea.

“We will continue to govern under the existing rules,” the speaker said on the social platform X.

Meanwhile, a rare image of bipartisan statesmanship was on display as the procedural Rules committee began debate launching the steps needed to push the foreign aid package forward toward weekend voting.

The Republican chairmen of the powerful Appropriations and Foreign Affairs committees alongside their top Democratic counterparts spoke in evocative language, some drawing on World War II history, to make the case for ensuring the U.S. stand with its allies against aggressors.

Chairman Michael McCaul of the Foreign Affairs Committee cast this as a “pivotal” time in world history, comparing the current images of people fleeing the conflict in Europe to the situation in 1939 as Hitler's Germany rose to power.

“Time is not on our side,” he told the panel.

The top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Greg Meeks of New York, shared McCaul’s urgency: “The camera of history is rolling.”

Johnson is trying to advance a complex plan to hold individual votes this weekend on the funds for Ukraine, Israel and allies in the Asia-Pacific, then stitch the package back together.

The package would also include legislation that allows the U.S. to seize frozen Russian central bank assets to rebuild Ukraine; impose sanctions on Iran, Russia, China and criminal organizations that traffic fentanyl; and potentially ban the video app TikTok if its China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake within a year.

President Joe Biden is emphatically pushing Congress to pass the legislation to buttress what has been a cornerstone of his foreign policy — halting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advance in Europe.

“With the boost from supplemental assistance, Ukrainians are entirely capable of holding their own through 2024, and puncturing Putin’s arrogant view that time is on his side,” CIA Director Bill Burns told an audience at the Bush Center in Dallas Thursday.

While Johnson is trying to remain close to Trump, and positioning the national security package as a way to assert U.S. strength in the world in the mold of Ronald Reagan-era Republicans, that puts the speaker politically at odds with the anti-interventionists powering the former president's bid to return to the White House.

“Why isn’t Europe giving more money to help Ukraine?” Trump wrote on social media, but his post did not explicitly oppose the foreign aid package before Congress.

At the Capitol, the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus was urging Republicans to block the package from advancing to a final vote. The group demanded that sweeping immigration enforcement be added to the bill and derided it as the “‘America Last’ foreign wars supplemental package.”

Given the high stakes of the moment for Ukraine, Israel and other allies, and the inability of Johnson to marshal enough Republican support, the speaker had no other choice but to rely on Democrats if he intends to see the national security package to passage.

Late Thursday night, the four Democrats on the Rules committee voted for a procedural move to advance the bill to the House floor, while three archconservative Republicans voted against it.

Rarely, if ever, does the minority party help the majority through the procedural hoops, particularly in the House Rules committee or during the various floor votes before final passage. It represented a level of bipartisanship unseen in this Congress, even as Republican leaders watched their own priority bills defeated on procedural votes by their own members.

“This is a moment in history where we need to ensure that at long last we are bringing this critical aid to Ukraine to the floor,” Democratic Whip Rep. Katherine Clark told reporters earlier Thursday.

Yet Democrats were also trying to apply maximum leverage as Johnson's job comes under threat.

At a closed door Democratic meeting, Clark advised rank and file lawmakers not to divulge their positions on whether they would vote to help defeat a motion to vacate Johnson as speaker, though a handful of Democrats have already publicly said they would likely do so.

“Do not box yourself in with a public statement," Clark told them according to a person familiar with the remarks.

Lawmakers say the world is watching and waiting on its next steps, but there's still a long slog ahead. If the House is able to clear the package this weekend, it still must go to the Senate for another round of voting.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican of Kentucky who is adamantly opposed to the aid package, said on X that “no one should expect easy or quick passage in the Senate.”

Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, left, is welcomed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., as Congress moves to advance an emergency aid package for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, joined at left by Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., argues a point as the House Rules Committee prepares an emergency foreign aid package for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., appears before the House Rules Committee as they prepare an emergency foreign aid package for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., and the House Republican leadership meet with reporters following a closed-door Republican strategy session as Johnson pushes towards separate votes on aid for Israel and Ukraine, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)