Tag: Taiwan

Taiwan Is Building a Satellite Network Without Elon Musk

In Taiwan, the government is racing to do what no country or even company has been able to: build an alternative to Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX. Starlink has allowed militaries, power plants and medical workers to maintain crucial online connections when primary infrastructure has failed in emergencies, […]

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The Risk of a China War Over Taiwan Is Rising

In 2020, the balance of military power in the Taiwan Strait began a gradual but profound shift in China’s favor. That August, then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar became the highest-ranking U.S. cabinet official to visit Taiwan in more than four decades. Though he was there to talk about the pandemic, China’s People’s […]

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F.B.I. Director Warns of China Hacking Threat

Christopher A. Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, warned on Wednesday that China was ramping up an extensive hacking operation geared at taking down the United States’ power grid, oil pipelines and water systems in the event of a conflict over Taiwan. Mr. Wray, appearing before a House subcommittee on China, offered an […]

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How Anxiety About War with China May Raise the Danger of It

Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is concerned enough about the risk of war between the United States and China that he is listening to the audiobook version of Barbara Tuchman’s “The Guns of August,” the classic history of how the major powers in 1914 stumbled into World War I. […]

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T.S.M.C and the Power of a Single Company

“If China takes Taiwan, they will turn the world off, potentially,” Donald Trump told Fox News recently, apparently referring to a potential seizure of one company that is central to, well, pretty much everything. Indeed, it’s arguably the most important company in the world. The company Trump alluded to, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or T.S.M.C., […]

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Why Nikki Haley Could Be the Most Dangerous President

In the alternate timeline where Ron DeSantis proved to be a capable campaigner and looked poised to defeat Donald Trump in New Hampshire and beyond, we would be facing a multitude of left-leaning essays on a single theme: “Why DeSantis is actually more dangerous than Trump.” In this world, the only threat to Trump in […]

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Taiwan’s Doubts About America Are Growing. That Could Be Dangerous.

The collection of American memorabilia, vast and well-lit in a busy area of City Hall in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan, reflected decades of eager courtship. Maps highlighted sister cities in Ohio and Arizona. There was a celebration of baseball, an American flag laid out on a table. And in the middle of it […]

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What’s in the New Tax Deal?

Lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee will attempt a rare feat on Friday when they begin debate on something that rarely comes together in an election year: bipartisan tax legislation. A group of top Republicans and Democrats reached agreement this week on a $78 billion package that would expand a tax benefit that […]

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China Has No Options Left on Taiwan Except Military Action

Conflict between China and the United States just got a little more likely. On Saturday, Taiwanese voters handed the Democratic Progressive Party (D.P.P.), which asserts that Taiwan is already independent from China and should stay that way, an unprecedented third consecutive presidential victory. In doing so, the island’s people shrugged off ominous warnings by China […]

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Who Is Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s Next President?

In 2014, when Lai Ching-te was a rising political star in Taiwan, he visited China and was quizzed in public about the most incendiary issue for leaders in Beijing: his party’s stance on the island’s independence. His polite but firm response, people who know him say, was characteristic of the man who was on Saturday […]

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Why Taiwan’s Election Matters to the World

Taiwan’s election on Saturday has big implications not only for the 23 million people who live on the island, but also for China’s superpower rivalry with the United States. Voters chose as their next president Lai Ching-te, the current vice president, who has vowed to continue his party’s policy of protecting the island’s sovereignty. The […]

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China Failed to Sway Taiwan’s Election. What Happens Now?

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has tied his country’s great power status to a singular promise: unifying the motherland with Taiwan, which the Chinese Communist Party sees as sacred, lost territory. A few weeks ago, Mr. Xi called this a “historical inevitability.” But Taiwan’s election on Saturday, handing the presidency to a party that promotes the […]

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In Taiwan, Voters Choose President as China Tensions Loom

Millions of Taiwan’s citizens lined up at ballot booths on Saturday to make a decision that could reshape the island democracy’s increasingly tense standoff with its far larger neighbor, China: Who should be Taiwan’s next president in dangerous times? The voters are mainly choosing between the governing Democratic Progressive Party, which wants to keep steering […]

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For Taiwanese Americans, Voting Back Home Takes More Than a Postage Stamp

They are some of the most determined voters in the world. Every four years, several thousand Taiwanese Americans book expensive plane tickets, pack their belongings and fly across the Pacific Ocean to cast ballots in Taiwan’s presidential election. Dual citizens can vote in Taiwan, with one catch: They cannot do so by mail. What once […]

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U.S. Strikes in Yemen, and Taiwan’s High-Stakes Election

The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists […]

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Taiwan Party, Reviled by China, Faces Test of its Staying Power

Nearly four decades ago, a group of lawyers, intellectuals and activists assembled in a hotel ballroom in Taipei to found an illegal political party dedicated to ending authoritarian rule in Taiwan. No longer a scrappy upstart, the Democratic Progressive Party, born in that ballroom, is now seeking an unprecedented third consecutive term. It needs to […]

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Taiwan Election: Why It Matters, and What It Could Mean for U.S. and China

Taiwan will choose a new president on Saturday, bringing new leadership to volatile relations with an increasingly belligerent Beijing. The outcome could raise or lower the risks of a crisis, giving China a potential transition point to revive engagement, or to increase the military threats that could ultimately draw the United States into a war. […]

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Taiwan Democracy Is Loud and Proud

Huang Chen-yu strode onto an outdoor stage in a southern Taiwanese county, whooping and hollering as she roused the crowd of 20,000 into a joyous frenzy — to welcome a succession of politicians in matching jackets. Taiwan is in the final days of its presidential election contest, and the big campaign rallies, with M.C.s like […]

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In Taiwan’s Elections, China Seems to Want a Vote

The first time I covered a Taiwan “election,” 38 years ago, the island was a dictatorship under martial law, with members of the opposition more likely to be tortured than to gain power. Government officials explained that modern democracy wasn’t fully compatible with Chinese culture, and one of my minders made a vague inquiry about […]

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Taiwan Raised an Alarm About a Chinese Satellite. Chaos Ensued.

Taiwan’s defense ministry issued an urgent alert Tuesday about a Chinese satellite launched on a rocket flying over the island, an alarming message that interrupted the final days of campaigning before a major election and spurred accusations of a political ploy. The alert was sent to mobile phones across the island of 23 million people, […]

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The Jan. 6 Inquiry Three Years On, and a PepsiCo Boycott in France

The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists […]

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Experts See a Message in Chinese Balloons Flying Over Taiwan

The balloon flights may, nonetheless, be part of the “gray zone” tactics that China uses to warn Taiwan of its military strength and options, without tipping into baldfaced confrontation. The timing of the balloon flights, close to Taiwan’s election, was telling, said Ko Yong-Sen, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security […]

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In Taiwan, I See a Geopolitical Dance Up Close

I was born in Taiwan, grew up in the United States, worked extensively in China and now live in Taipei. This mix of experiences has given me a front-row seat to the complex, decades-long dance between these nations. Lately, the world is paying considerably more attention to my homeland, especially after the former U.S. House […]

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The Wild Card in Taiwan’s Election: Frustrated Young Voters

In the months leading up to a pivotal presidential election for Taiwan, candidates have focused on who can best handle the island democracy’s volatile relationship with China, with its worries about the risks of war. But at a recent forum in Taipei, younger voters instead peppered two of the candidates with questions about everyday issues […]

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Can Taiwan Continue to Fight Off Chinese Disinformation?

Suspicious videos that began circulating in Taiwan this month seemed to show the country’s leader advertising cryptocurrency investments. President Tsai Ing-wen, who has repeatedly risked Beijing’s ire by asserting her island’s autonomy, appeared to claim in the clips that the government helped develop investment software for digital currencies, using a term that is common in […]

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Emotions Are Running Feverishly High in Congress

But efforts to pass aid to Israel have been complicated by political considerations. President Joe Biden’s supplemental funding request to Congress also included funds for Ukraine and the southern border, as well as humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Republican-controlled House, under newly minted Speaker Mike Johnson, narrowly passed a partisan $14 billion stand-alone bill supporting […]

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Why We Should Fear China More Than Middle Eastern War

On Thursday, Joe Biden gave a speech linking the Israel-Hamas conflict and the Russian invasion of Ukraine and framing American involvement as part of a grand strategy to contain our enemies and rivals. “When terrorists don’t pay a price for their terror, when dictators don’t pay a price for their aggression,” he declared, “they keep […]

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China’s Military is Making Risky Moves and Adding Nuclear Warheads, U.S. Says

Risky Maneuvers Since the fall of 2021, the Pentagon report says, the United States has recorded more than 180 intercepts of U.S. aircraft by Chinese military forces in the region. Beijing has long bristled at the U.S. military aircraft and ships that operate in international skies and seas near China. China has been increasingly assertive […]

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To Avoid War, the U.S. Must Both Deter and Reassure China

For a half-century, America has avoided war with China over Taiwan largely through a delicate balance of deterrence and reassurance. That equilibrium has been upset. China is building up and flexing its military power; hostile rhetoric emanates from both Beijing and Washington. War seems likelier each day. It’s not too late to restore the kind […]

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How Israel’s 9/11 Tests American Grand Strategy

Twenty-one years ago, in the shadow of the Sept. 11 attacks, George W. Bush warned of an “axis of evil,” encompassing the authoritarian and anti-American regimes of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. He did not claim that they were actually allies or partners in the style of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. What made them […]

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