Taiwan’s KMT opposition tries to reassure US over defence policies it will adopt if it wins next year’s presidential election
- Mainland China-friendly party sends delegation to US-Taiwan Defence Industry Conference to signal to Washington that it will remain oriented towards Washington
- KMT stresses that if its candidate Han Kuo-yu wins next year’s contest the island will continue to be a ‘responsible partner for security’
Taiwan’s main opposition party Kuomintang has sent a high-profile delegation to the US-Taiwan Defence Industry Conference to try to reassure the Americans about the party’s security and defence policies if its presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu wins the upcoming election.
The annual conference, held by the US-Taiwan Business Council on Monday in Ellicott City, Maryland, has long been seen as an important occasion for senior officials and business leaders from the two sides to share their views on defence and related matters.
This year the mainland-friendly KMT made use of the occasion to promote the defence and foreign policies Han – who is challenging incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party – would adopt if the KMT returns to power after January’s presidential poll.
“The primary focus of our national defence and force building should be aimed at preventing [China] from making a decision to use force,” its representative Alexander Huang Chieh-cheng, chairman of the Council on Strategic and Wargaming Studies, said during a keynote speech.
Huang, a former vice-chairman of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council which charts cross-strait policy, told American officials the KMT would refrain from being a “troublemaker in the region,” and would be “a responsible partner for security in the Indo-Pacific”.