Fresh from a meeting with the president of Taiwan, Bay State Rep. Seth Moulton says all eyes are on Ukraine as the world considers the implications of Russia’s invasion.
“As that war sadly continues and evolves, the Taiwanese people are carefully calibrating what lessons they need to take from it,” Moulton, a member of the House Subcommittee on China, told the Herald during a telephone interview Thursday.
Moulton, speaking from a bus in San Francisco after a bipartisan congressional trip to California made alongside House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, said the Taiwanese government is uniquely aware of what Russia’s war against its fellow former Soviet state says of the future for their own continued independence amid Chinese territorial assertions over their island nation.
The Salem Democrat visited Taiwan last October, not long after then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey made their own much-criticized trips. Moulton said Thursday that Taiwan’s leadership hasn’t grown more desperate for U.S. support in the months since his visit, but has become more concerned about evolutions in global norms seen elsewhere.
“They are increasingly attuned to the urgency of the threat and also better attuned to some of America’s questions and concerns. Everybody is looking for the lessons of Ukraine,” he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping was in France Thursday for a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, where the subject of Ukraine was top of mind for diplomats as the war continues through its second year and China’s support of Russian efforts via arms and trade becomes more public and defiant of efforts to sanction Russia for their unlawful invasion.
The Chinese government was apparently not pleased with McCarthy’s decision to take a meeting with the elected leader of Taiwan, promising “resolute and forceful measures to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Moulton said that it is absurd for one nation to threaten others simply because the leaders of allied states choose to meet.
“It’s only Chinese propaganda that is turning this into something provocative and unusual,” he said. “That the Chinese Communist Party thinks they need to threaten and intimidate democratic allies for holding meetings, especially threatening and intimidating American leaders for meeting with a Democratic ally on our own soil, is ridiculous and a bit pathetic.”
Moulton, a Marine, praised the Republican House Speaker for his refusal to bow to pressure from China not to hold the meeting.
“I think it showed some political courage on Kevin McCarthy’s part to find this compromise,” he said.
Taiwan has been governed independently since 1949, though Beijing has always maintained the island is part of their territory. In addition to producing the mass of the world’s semiconductors, the island is seen as a potentially strategic point in the Pacific Ocean from which to launch naval operations.
According to Moulton, the key takeaway from his meeting with Taiwanese leaders is that it isn’t in anyone’s interest to start a war there.
“So while this may seem far away and out of mind, our work and our presence in the in the Pacific in preventing that war will ultimately save a lot of lives, potentially including thousands of Americans,” he said.
