• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Taiwan's government mum on reported visit by U.S. defense official

ROC Central News Agency

02/18/2023 12:55 PM

Taipei, Feb. 18 (CNA) Taiwan's government agencies declined to comment late Friday on a reported visit to Taipei by Michael Chase, United States deputy assistant secretary of defense for China.

According to a United Daily News report that cited unnamed sources on Saturday, however, Chase has already arrived and has visited Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense (MND), its Taipei-based think tank, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, and has met with members of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT).

The first report of an unannounced visit by Chase was in the Financial Times on Thursday, but the newspaper did not specify when he arrived in Taiwan.

Citing a source familiar with the matter, an updated Financial Times report on Friday said Chase had arrived in Taiwan after wrapping up a visit to Mongolia.

Asked Friday evening to comment on the report, Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense (MND) said, "the MND values any visits by individuals from a Taiwan-friendly group or country offering suggestions on defense preparedness of the armed forces. However, the MND will not comment on details."

When asked about Chase's reported visit, an official at Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "I really don't know."

In similar vein, Taiwan's Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) said in response to reporters' questions at the Legislative Yuan that he was "not certain" of any such trip.

He added, however, that it was "good" for any groups or countries to provide constructive and beneficial advice on Taiwan's defense and combat preparedness efforts.

If Chase is indeed in Taipei, that makes him the second high-level official from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to visit Taiwan since 2019, when Heino Klinck, deputy assistant secretary for East Asia in the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump, visited the country.

The Taiwan Travel Act, signed into law by Trump in 2018, allows bilateral visits between high-level government officials from the U.S. and Taiwan, lifting unspoken restrictions for such visits that had been in place for 40 years.

Chase's reported visit comes amid tensions between China and the U.S., after the latter dispatched an F-22 stealth fighter jet on Feb. 4 to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon that was drifting over North America.

The Chinese government claimed that the balloon was a civilian aircraft that was conducting meteorological research, but the U.S. said it had been dispatched by the Chinese military for surveillance purposes.

Following that incident, three other suspicious flying objects have been shot down by the American military over U.S. territory in the past two weeks, while Beijing has also accused Washington of flying balloons in Chinese airspace.

On Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden told the media that he was planning to talk with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to "get to the bottom" of the incidents.

(By Sean Lin, Matt Yu and Teng Pei-ju)

Enditem/pc