Responding to Trump invasion comments, Taiwan says must rely on itself for security
Democratic Taiwan has over the past five years or so faced ramped up military and political pressure from China, which views the separately governed island as its "sacred" territory. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.
Asked about Trump's remarks, Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hsiao Kuang-wei said the government closely monitored interactions between senior U.S. and Chinese officials.
"Taiwan's security must be achieved through its own efforts, so our country has been dedicating itself to raising its self defence capabilities and resilience. Our country will keep working hard to do this," Hsiao told reporters in Taipei.
The United States is Taiwan's most important international backer and arms supplier, although there are no formal diplomatic ties. There is also no defence treaty so should China attack Washington is under no obligation to help.
The United States, which is however bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, has long stuck to a policy of "strategic ambiguity," not making clear whether it would respond militarily to a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
Trump made the invasion comments in an interview with Fox News, ahead of talks in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Moscow's war in Ukraine.
On Monday, China's foreign ministry said Taiwan was an internal matter that was for the Chinese people to resolve.
Taiwan's government vehemently opposes China's sovereignty claims.
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is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy,, was published 0n July 16. You can purchase it here. Attendees look on during Turning Point USA's Culture War event at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, on October 29, 2019. Megan Jelinger/AFP via Getty Images Last week, two young liberals asked for help finding a job in the ideas industry. And I didn't have a great answer. It made sense that they were asking: We were at a conference for liberals, dedicated to building a version of the doctrine that works in the 21st century. They were interested in studying ideas professionally, and I was there to moderate a panel about political philosophy. Yet I found myself struggling to give good advice. Sure, they could try for an internship at a liberal publication or think tank, but those are fiercely competitive and don't pay much. 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Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Those are two examples of numerous well-funded programs explicitly designed to usher as many bright young people into the institutional conservative world as possible. If you're an ambitious young college grad, and anywhere on the spectrum from libertarian to hardcore Trumpist, you've got tons of options to get into the ideas game. My young acquaintances really wanted a liberal version of such a thing. But as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem to exist. Where there should be a talent pipeline from universities to liberal public intellectualism, there is a giant sucking sound instead. And, increasingly, it's giving the right a leg up in winning the future. The right's winning formula for training youth It is true, as conservatives have long alleged, that America's intellectual institutions are pretty left-leaning places. They often overstate the case — professors are more likely to be Elizabeth Warren Dems than 'globalize the intifada' socialist revolutionaries — but data confirms that liberals outnumber conservatives in academia and the media by pretty significant margins. This is, of course, not at all new. One of the founding texts of the postwar conservative movement, William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale, is all about how academia is full of socialists who are chipping away at the eternal truths of capitalism and Christianity. Buckley founded National Review as an antidote to what he saw as the liberal tilt of the mainstream American press. The legacy of Buckley-style thinking is the rise of a conservative ideas industry. 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It's not just that you get to go on all-expenses-paid trips with nice meals; it's that you are put in an environment where you're reading and debating classic works of political thought and literature with other people who share those interests. If you're the kind of nerd who wants to debate the finer points of Locke and Hamilton during undergrad summers, you're the kind of nerd who might one day be someone who matters in US politics — and the right's fellowships are there to help make sure you're mattering on their side. The people these young people are meeting are important and famous (well, DC famous). In a 2021 episode of the Know Your Enemy podcast, Nate Hochman — a radical young conservative writer who later staffed both Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Eric Schmitt — talks at length about 'the masterful things the conservative movement institutionally has done in terms of mentorship.' 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Right-wing publications and think tanks are much more open to debating big-picture questions — say, what kind of a nation is America? — than their left-wing peers (more on that in a second). Claremont, for example, was founded by students of conservative political philosopher Harry Jaffa, and it shows in the kind of work they put out (even when it strikes me as substantively ridiculous). Liberals are suffering from success There is no parallel culture in American liberalism — a function, in part, of liberalism's longtime intellectual dominance. There wasn't much of a need for liberal donors to create programs to cultivate liberal thought, as people interested could simply go get a PhD or an entry-level reporting job. However, these institutions were not avowedly liberal in character. They styled themselves as politically neutral, focused more on quality research and reporting, than as contributing to a particular ideological cause. 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It trains young people in the big-picture ideas, like conservative visions of political morality and religion, and teaches them to connect those things to everyday policy discussions. You aren't learning about abstract ideas or concrete policy, but rather learning a comprehensive worldview that treats policy issues as downstream of specific values. You are, in short, learning an ideology. Liberalism has plenty of brilliant theorists who work at a largely abstract level, and policy wonks who work on the most applied issues. But in the middle area of ideology, one bridging the gap between principle and policy, they've basically ceded the field to conservatism. The pipeline problem for young people is a symptom of the movement's blind spot: liberals, as a collective, don't care to cultivate a youth ideological cadre. This might not have been a problem in the past — and maybe even a benefit. 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