Office of the President Republic of China(Taiwan)

Foreign Minister Yang, AIT Director Stanton, US Assistant Secretary of Commerce Mr. Kumar, and Bill Wiseman, Chairman of the AmCham, Distinguished guests, Ladies and gentlemen, good evening!

This is really a great pleasure for me to attend the 60-year anniversity of partnership celebration co-hosted by the AmCham Taipei and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Taiwan) at the Taipei Guest House.

This year is certainly a very festive one, because it marks the “double celebration” of both the Republic of China’s 100th anniversary, which you call “centennial” in English, and AmCham's 60th birthday, which we call “花甲大壽” in Chinese. At the Taipei Guest House, the choice of the venue, I think, is very meaningful because as you know, the Republic of China’s peace treaty with Japan was signed here at the second floor on April 28, 1952. This has something to do with the United States. The treaty formally terminated a state of hostility between China and Japan, and reconfirmed the transfer of Taiwan sovereignty to the Republic of China that had actually taken place seven years earlier on October 25, 1945. Actually, the ROC was not invited to the 1951 San Francisco Peace Conference because of the objection of the Soviet Union. To remedy that, the 1951 San Francisco Treaty with Japan expressly provided in its Article 26 that any nation which participated in the war but was absent from the conference could conclude a separate peace treaty with Japan and in that connection Japan was urged by the US to do so with the Republic of China. So we’re certainly very grateful to the US for its help in that matter. This historical landmark is therefore a symbol of our friendship and gives the celebration of our 60 years of partnership a very special meaning. So I’d like to say “Happy birthday to AmCham,” and I hope we will continue the longstanding support and contribution to our bilateral partnership.

Let me just look back a little bit for the major historic milestones of the past 60 years. First of all, on June 27, 1950, three days after the outbreak of the Korean War, President Truman ordered the Seventh Fleet to patrol the Taiwan Strait, protecting Taiwan from a possible invasion from mainland China. But this has also had an interesting domestic ramification. Less than three weeks later, the government of President Chiang Kai-shek decided to have local elections before the end of the year. And in October in Hualien County, the magistrate and the county council were elected. That was the first time in 5,000 years of Chinese history that we directly elected local officials. And the following year, all of Taiwan had local elections. That was a very important step in Taiwan’s democratization in the future. Second, on December 3, 1954, the two countries, the United States of America and the Republic of China, signed a mutual defense treaty, which helped Taiwan to defend itself for a quarter of the century, and on October 23, 1958, President Chiang Kai-shek and Secretary of State Dulles issued a joint statement in which President Chiang Kai-shek said the way to recover the Chinese mainland is through the Three Principles of the People but not the use of force. That was a very important statement, signaling the ROC’s attitude not to use force on issues between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. And that particular meeting was actually held just a few days after the end of the Quemoy Crisis. And on April 10, 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Taiwan Relations Act, which obliged the United States to provide defensive arms to Taiwan, to help Taiwan participate in international organizations, and to protect the interests, legal or otherwise, of Taiwan and the United States. And on July 14, 1982, the United States provided Six Assurances to Taiwan regarding the new joint communiqué of August 17 between the United States and mainland China.

Let me turn to the economic side. From 1950 to 1965, United States provided close to US$1.5 billion of economic aid to Taiwan—US$1.5 billion. That’s a lot of money in those days, which may be equal to more than US$10 billion today. And this helped Taiwan's burgeoning manufacturing industry and helped us to shift from import substitution to export expansion. Now, the Republic of China (Taiwan) is the 16th largest exporting country and 17th largest importing country of the world. And so far we have accumulated US$400 billion of foreign exchange reserves, which makes us number 4 in the world. I want to thank America for its support, not only in the security area, but also in the economic area. And during that process, we were able to complete the land reform—the "Land to the Tiller" program—and effectively narrow the gap between the rich and the poor. Now let me remind you of the contributions of AmCham in all the 60 years. One thing I remember vividly was in 1979. Well, actually 1978. Mr. Robert Parker, the Chairman of the AmCham decided to set up a radio station—that’s ICRT—to replace the Armed Forces Radio Taiwan [Armed Forces Network Taiwan]. As you know, that radio was the radio we grew up with. We listen all the time to its rock music, like [singing] “Puff, the Magic Dragon”. Well, in 1979, representatives of AmCham, including Mr. Robert Parker, a prominent lawyer, went to the Capitol Hill to help forge the Taiwan Relations Act. In the end, that was a very special piece of legislation. At the time I was studying at Harvard Law School. One of my professors met me in the hallway of the library and said, “Mr. Ma, you've got to understand that your country is the most recognized country in the world,” and one commentator in the professional law journal says, “While the Carter administration de-recognized Taiwan, the Taiwan Relations Act re-recognizes it.” But in any case, the Taiwan Relations Act, after more than 33 years of life, has proved to be a very effective means to maintain our partnership thanks to a very great extent to AmCham. But AmCham’s contributions to Taiwan didn’t stop there. In the following 30 years, AmCham has been very supportive of our policies and sometimes critical of some of our policies which they consider not in Taiwan’s best interest. But when we decided to negotiate an economic cooperation framework agreement, ECFA, with the mainland, we got full support from AmCham. Actually, there was a very little episode. When I was mayor of Taipei, I had the chance to meet with a ranking US official, and I said “Do you think that we could negotiate a free trade agreement with the United States?” Well, his answer was interesting. He said, “Do that first with mainland China.” I kept that in mind when I became president, and I thought that would be a good idea. Why? Because America is no longer our largest trading partner, but mainland China became one in 2003. And in the years between 2000 and 2008, 58 FTAs were concluded in Asia. Taiwan was excluded, and the other country excluded was North Korea. So this is something a little bit embarrassing. We had to do… we had to try our best to join the regional economic integration in this part of the world. So we decided to add ECFA with the mainland. And throughout the process, through the publications of AmCham, we got very positive, steady support, and we want to thank AmCham for doing that. In the year after we signed ECFA, or in your report, you still have a poll and it shows that 90% of your members consider this the right thing to do. We appreciate that also very much.

Now, back to the issue of our relations with the United States. A lot of people came to Taiwan, particularly from academia, saying that the relationship is the best in 60 years. Certainly, what we did when we first took office is to restore the most precious element of our relations—that is high-level trust. We tried to conduct a policy of relations with the US in a surprise-free and low-key fashion. We want to make our friends believe that we are predictable in our conduct of foreign relations. And this received a very positive reaction from Washington. Certainly, we do have some problems, well, with the most prominent one—beef, I know. But don’t worry about that. People here love American beef. We need enough time to let people understand. On the other hand, we hope we could, if possible, re-open the negotiations under TIFA so that we could advance the negotiations, so that we will be able to conclude something in the future. Of course, the Visa Waiver Program is probably the most popular one. We’ve already lowered the rejection rate of visa application to less than 3%—just about 2.2%. And we already installed the program for our citizens to apply for their passports personally. I hope we could get that treatment as soon as possible. You know, there are more than 410,000 visits from Taiwan that visit the United States every year. Let me give you an example of Great Britain, which gave us visa-free treatment two years ago in the beginning of 2009. Last year, the number of visitors to Great Britain increased by 150% and trade grew 25%. You don't need me to remind you that all our visitors are very serious shoppers. So if you could give us Visa Waiver Program status, I’m sure there will be more visitors to the United States, and we’ll buy more and negotiate more agreements, which will be mutually beneficial. Actually now 117 countries and territories have given us that status; the very prominent omission is the United States. So that’s what’s harder to really link—that missing link. Well, last but not the least, of course, you know what I’m going to say, we still need that F-16C/D and the diesels. We hope you will consider it, which is vital to our country’s security. Well, last but not the least, I hope everyone enjoys tonight’s celebration, and let us work together, harder, to make our relationship even better and more positive one.

Happy birthday again. Thank you very much.