China blasts US over wording change on State Department’s Taiwan websiteBy Callie Patteson
May 10, 2022
China’s Foreign Ministry ripped the State Department this week over a wording change on an agency web page focused on Taiwan, calling it a “petty act of fictionalizing,” according to a new report.
As of May 5, the State Department online fact sheet on “US Relations with Taiwan” no longer states that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence.”
The previous version of the fact sheet – last updated in August 2018, according to a recent screengrab obtained by the WayBack Machine internet archive – began by noting that Washington and Taipei enjoyed “a robust unofficial relationship.”
The latest version of that fact sheet moves that statement to the middle of the second paragraph and begins: “As a leading democracy and a technological powerhouse, Taiwan is a key U.S. partner in the Indo-Pacific.”
“Though the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, we have a robust unofficial relationship as well as an abiding interest in maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” the statement goes on. “Consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States makes available defense articles and services as necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”
The fact sheet also added language referencing the Six Assurances – a set of Reagan-era promises made to Taiwan in 1982 that were not declassified until 2020.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2022/05/10/china-rips-us-over-wording-change-on-state-dept-taiwan-website/
