Foregoing the usual media press conference, AIT’s annual foreign policy speech was presented to Taiwanese university students… easier to sway than the press, perhaps?
Instead of the annual traditional press conference, Sandra Oudkirk, director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), faced Taiwanese college students on December 4 deliver a year-end policy speech. She basically reiterated that US policy is still the same as it was since 1979 and that there is broad consensus back in Washington supporting it. Of course she emphasized the same US policy key points including the Taiwan Relations Act guiding their policies, that US policy contributes to maintaining peace & stability in the region. Thus in fact misguiding the students and influencing the election. Now that’s not what anyone wants you to think but that’s pretty much what happened.
Note: I checked the voachinese.com article and twitter feed comments below. I was surprised to find them loaded with the majority of anti-US interference comments a couple of which I screenshotted and dropped in here…
https://x.com/VOAChinese/status/1731674388825604533?s=20
The Voice of America article talks about how Taiwanese students are “worried” about China invading Taiwan to which of course Ms. Oudkirk assures the frightened students that American will protect them. Good grief, then they want the American people to be reassured that this type of absurd western propaganda rhetoric isn’t meant to mislead people or influence the election. Its like telling us the United States doesn’t really mean to be dropping its bombs on Palestinian children & their moms while we’re sitting here watching them do it. I could just end the video right here and be done. US officials also cite distorted polls such as the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s latest annual National Defense Survey, released last week, found that nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of Americans express concern that China could invade Taiwan. Well after being repeatedly lied to about China, the polls are certainly going to reflect the propaganda and then they feed those poll results to easily influenced college students.
If you know anything about the actual China geopolitical landscape, you know that it is literally impossible that China would ever make the first move to attack Taiwan. I’ll repeat the scenario again. IF ANY parties engage in a malign attempt to declare Taiwan independence, this would be unequivocally egregious breach of several multi decades long agreements, and China might certainly then use military force in response, I don’t think that would surprise anyone.
Next, the idea that US policy and actions help maintain peace & stability in the region, I don’t know where to begin to dismantle that idea. By comparison, back in America, there are Texas politicians who want to be independent, there is a bill for Texas to secede from the United States. And China of course thinks its ok to help them by selling them weapons, right? Of course not, you are undoubtedly thinking right now that would be insane, it would be diplomatically inappropriate. Yet that’s exactly what the United States is doing, selling weapons to Taiwan, a Chinese province that is part of China as all long standing agreements say it is.
The next area to deceive college students with American propaganda is regarding Tiktok, which is the Douyin Chinese Mandarin version in Taiwan. Another Taiwanese, Shen Boyang, chairman of the Taiwan Democracy Laboratory, claims China is focusing on using Tiktok/Douyin as their main way of influencing the election through groups that are “friendly to China who support the idea of peaceful reunification….oh well something peaceful, isn’t that sinister. Former Japanese Congressman Shio Sugano added that Japanese society needs to pay attention to the impact of China’s threat to Taiwan. What threat? Again, friends, there is no threat, at least not from China, anyway. Just two weeks ago, during his speech at the APEC Summit in San Francisco, emphasized again that China will not enter into any cold war or hot war with any other nation.
The Taiwanese people are wise and educated and have eyes, especially their college students. They can see the results of what seems to frequently happen when you get yourself mixed up with the United States and its “strategic interests” Its no secret and its not personal opinion that millions of innocent civilians in Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Gaza, end up dead. I don’t believe the Taiwanese are interested in becoming the next half a million dead Ukrainians or Palestinians on a blood-soaked island. There’s your threat, not China who has done nothing but spend the past several decades rising to global superpower in peace without starting war or bombing any other nation.