February 23, 2024
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, and Republic of Korea Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul met on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on February 22. During their meeting, the three discussed efforts to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. This follows on the joint statement issued after the August 2023 trilateral leaders’ summit involving the United States, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, which reaffirmed the importance of supporting peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and stressed opposition to any unilateral attempts to change the regional status quo through force or coercion.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China (Taiwan) highly welcomes this development and thanks the three nations’ foreign ministers for building on this foundation, continuing to pay attention to cross-strait issues, and working to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
Following Taiwan’s successful presidential election at the beginning of this year, China has continued to increase suppression, military intimidation, and gray-zone tactics against Taiwan. It unilaterally abrogated a cross-strait agreement concerning the M503 flight route, thereby sowing doubts about flight security in the region. Moreover, China has claimed that it will begin regular law enforcement in the waters around Kinmen and Xiamen. All of China’s provocative activities are aimed at upsetting the status quo and constitute a serious challenge to regional security. They have also elicited a high level of international concern.
Since last year, joint statements from the US and other like-minded nations after bilateral meetings of heads of state, as well as multilateral gatherings such as the G7 summit and the aforementioned trilateral leaders’ summit, have all clearly shown a high degree of international consensus on the importance of cross-strait and regional peace and stability. As a responsible member of the international community, Taiwan will continue to work with the United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and other like-minded nations to defend the rules-based international order and promote regional peace, stability, and prosperity.