Taiwan sees political warfare in dispute with China over vaccines reuters.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from reuters.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
TAIPEI (Reuters) - The top U.S. diplomat in Taiwan on Wednesday signalled Washington was in no hurry to send COVID-19 vaccines to the island, noting its infection numbers remained comparatively low, although he said talks were continuing on the issue. After months of relative safety, Taiwan is battling a surge in domestic COVID-19 cases, but has only vaccinated around 1% of its more than 23 million people. Taiwan s government says millions more vaccines are on the way, and last week the health minister spoke to his U.S. counterpart to ask for help after President Joe Biden said he would send at least 20 million more COVID-19 vaccine doses abroad by the end of June. Brent Christensen, the outgoing de facto U.S. ambassador in Taipei, told reporters Taiwan s management of the pandemic had impressed everyone globally. We are very confident in the ability of Taiwan s health authorities to contain the latest outbreak, he said. I d also point out that many of Taiwan s neighbours in the region
May 26, 2021
In a sign of the shifting U.S. position on Taiwan, Tokyo-based envoys from the two states have broken bread at Taipei’s de facto embassy in the Japanese capital the first time ambassador-level diplomats have met there since 1979.
The move is in line with what some observers have heralded as a new standard for U.S. officials’ interactions with self-ruled Taiwan amid the United States’ growing rivalry with China.
Frank Hseih, who heads the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan, wrote on his Facebook page Tuesday that he had invited U.S. Embassy Charge d’affaires Joseph Young to dine with him at his official residence a day earlier to discuss “regional peace and prosperity” and other issues. The pair were joined by Japanese lawmakers, who Hseih described as “friends.”