Taiwan admits paying American lobbyists to help establish closer US ties amid rising pressure from Beijing

Name: US President Joe Biden says US military will defend Taiwan if attacked
Uploaded: 2022-06-16T13:00:17.000Z
Duration: 3 min 9 s
Description: US President Joe Biden says US military will defend Taiwan if attacked

Island’s foreign ministry says it hired PR firms to help US government and others ‘have a better understanding of Taiwan’, saying lobbying transparency is key

Lobbyists Bob Dole and Dick Gephardt – both former US politicians – helped put Taiwanese officials in front of key White House figures, according to reports

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A Washington-based think tank report says Taiwan’s foreign agents have been lobbying the US for years to adopt many of the policies the Biden government and the new Congress are now pursuing. Photo: EPA-EFE

Lawrence Chung

Published: 9:00pm, 16 Jun 2022

Taiwan hired American influencers to pull strings at the US government and Congress as part of its efforts to establish solid bilateral ties in the face of growing military threats from Beijing, which claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island.

In a rare statement, the island’s foreign ministry admitted it had long been the island’s practice to employ public relations companies in the US to help consolidate Taiwan-US ties – a relationship billed by both Taipei and Washington as rock solid in recent years.

“Regardless of which political party is the government, this is a long-time practice for our representative office in the US to hire public relations firms to assist us in strengthening ties with the United States,” Taiwan’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said in a news conference on Thursday.

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US President Joe Biden says US military will defend Taiwan if attacked

She stressed that the main opposition Kuomintang had also engaged PR experts when it was in government.

“Many countries have also hired public relations firms to lobby [the US],” she said, adding there was nothing wrong with the practice as long as the procedures were legal and transparent.

Ou’s comments came after local media reported that the independence-leaning DPP government was spending big bucks in the US in a bid to improve its image as a capable administration to allow it to build rock-solid ties with Washington.

Taiwan’s relations with the US have grown ever closer since Donald Trump became president in 2017, despite Washington recognising Beijing diplomatically instead of Taipei.

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