The bill adopted Wednesday by the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee provides for direct military aid in Taiwan of nearly $ 4.5 billion over the next four years.
Le Monde with AFP
A first direct military aid from Washington to Taiwan crossed a key stage on Wednesday, September 14, this vote risking causing Beijing.
“This is the most important overhaul of American policy with regard to Taiwan” since 1979, when Washington has recognized Beijing while agreeing to maintain the island’s self -defense capacity, assure the senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham, at the head of this initiative.
The bill, adopted by the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, provides for direct military aid in Taiwan of nearly $ 4.5 billion over the next four years. He also demands from the American president that he imposes sanctions on the main Chinese financial institutions in response to any “climbing in hostile acts towards Taiwan”.
significant rapprochement
The “Taiwan Policy Act of 2022”, as it is baptized, also plans to grant the island the status of “major ally”.
This vote in committee is only the first step in a long legislative process: the text must now be adopted in plenary session in the Senate, then in the Chamber, before being promulgated by Joe Biden. But it still marks a significant rapprochement between the United States and Taiwan, at a time when relations between Beijing and Washington have been at their lowest for decades.
The White House therefore navigates this file with great caution. “We will continue to communicate directly with the Congress on this text,” said the spokesperson for the White House Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday. Before ensuring that the Biden administration “would continue to deepen its partnership with Taiwan with strong diplomatic, economic and military support”.
This vote at Congress comes only a few days after sale by Washington for $ 1.1 billion in weapons in Taiwan, and just over a month after a visit to Taiwan of the president of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, who had caused Beijing’s fury. China then launched the most important military maneuvers in its history around the island.
Before the visit to Taiwan of Ms. Pelosi, number three of the United States and higher American official to go to the island for decades, the entourage of Joe Biden had already discreetly argued in China that It did not represent the policy of the administration, the Congress being a distinct power of the government.
China estimates that Taiwan, populated by around 23 million inhabitants, is one of its provinces, which she has not yet managed to combine with the rest of her territory since the end of the war Chinese civilian (1949). In seven decades, the Communist army has never been able to conquer the island, which remained under the control of the Republic of China – the regime which once governed continental China and only governs Taiwan today.