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      Taiwan’s Opposition Splits After Collapse of Unity Bid

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      The split over a proposed joint ticket bolsters the governing party candidate’s chances in the coming presidential election. That won’t please Beijing.For weeks, Taiwan’s two main opposition parties were edging toward a coalition, in a bid to unseat the island democracy’s governing party in the coming presidential election, an outcome that Beijing would welcome. The election, one elder statesman from Taiwan’s opposition said, was a choice between war and peace.This week, though, the two parties — which both argue that they are better able to ensure peace with China — chose in spectacular fashion to go to war against each other. An incipient deal for a joint presidential ticket between the long-established Nationalist Party and the upstart Taiwan People’s Party unraveled with the speed, melodrama and lingering vitriol of a celebrity wedding gone wrong.A meeting that was opened to journalists on Thursday seemed to have been meant as a show of good will within the opposition. But it featured sniping between rival spokesmen, a long-winded tribute to the spirit of Thanksgiving by Terry Gou — a magnate turned politician trying to cajole the opposition toward unity — and mutual accusations of bad faith between the two presidential candidates who had been trying to strike a deal: Hou Yu-ih of the Nationalist Party and Ko Wen-je, the founder of the Taiwan People’s Party.Mr. Gou tried to break the icy tensions at one point by saying that he needed a bathroom break.“I don’t want a silent ending on this Thanksgiving Day,” he later told journalists after Mr. Hou and his two allies had left the stage. “But unfortunately it looks like it will be a silent ending.”Friday was the deadline for registering for Taiwan’s election, which will be held on Jan. 13, and by noon both Mr. Hou and Mr. Ko had officially registered as presidential candidates, confirming that there would be no unity ticket. Mr. Gou, who had also thrown his hat in the ring, withdrew from the race.Taiwan’s young, vigorous democratic politics has often included some raucous drama. Yet even experienced observers of the Taiwanese scene have been agog by this week, and baffled as to why the opposition parties would stage such a public rupture over who would be the presidential candidate on a unity ticket, and who would accept the vice presidential nomination.“It really defies theories of coalition building,” Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Chengchi University in Taipei, said of the week’s bickering. “How do you tell undecided voters ‘still vote for me’ after having a very publicly messy, willfully uninformed debate about who ought to be first and who ought to be second?”The collapse of the proposed opposition pact could have consequences rippling beyond Taiwan, affecting the tense balance between Beijing — which claims the self-governing island as its own — and Washington over the future status of the island.The situation also makes it more likely that Taiwan’s vice president, Lai Ching-te, the presidential candidate for the governing Democratic Progressive Party, or D.P.P., will win the election — a result sure to displease Chinese Communist Party leaders.Mr. Lai’s party asserts Taiwan’s distinctive identity and claims to nationhood, and has become closer to the United States. China’s leaders could respond to a victory for him by escalating menacing military activities around Taiwan, which sits roughly 100 miles off the Chinese coast.A victory for the Nationalists could reopen communication with China that mostly froze shortly after Tsai Ing-wen from the Democratic Progressive Party was elected president in 2016. And a third successive loss for the Nationalists, who favor closer ties and negotiations with Beijing, could undercut Chinese confidence that they remain a viable force.Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s vice president, and a candidate from the Democratic Progressive Party. A split between Mr. Hou and Ko Wen-je of Taiwan People’s Party may benefit his campaign.I-Hwa Cheng/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTaiwan’s first-past-the-post system for electing its president awards victory to the candidate with the highest raw percentage of votes. Mr. Lai has led in polls for months, but his projected share of the vote has sat below 40 percent in many surveys, meaning that the opposition could claw past his lead if it coalesced behind a single candidate. Mr. Hou and Mr. Ko for months sat around the mid- to high 20s in polls, suggesting that it could be hard for either to overtake Mr. Lai unless the other candidate stepped aside.“This may scare off moderate voters who might have been into voting for a joint ticket for the sake of blocking the D.P.P.,” Mr. Nachman said of the falling out between the opposition parties. “Now those moderate voters will look at this team in a different light.”For now, many Taiwanese people seem absorbed — sometimes gleeful, sometimes anguished — by the spectacle of recent days. “Wave Makers,” a recent Netflix drama series, showed Taiwanese electoral politics as a noble, if sometimes cutthroat, affair. This week was more like the political satire “Veep.”Last weekend, the Nationalist Party and Taiwan People’s Party appeared poised to settle on a unity ticket, with each agreeing to decide on their choice of joint presidential nominee — Mr. Hou or Mr. Ko — by examining electoral polls to determine who had the strongest shot at winning.But teams of statistical experts put forward by each party could not agree on what polls to use and what to make of the results, and the parties became locked in days of bickering over the numbers and their implications. At news conferences, rival spokespeople brandished printouts of opinion poll results and struggled to explain complex statistical concepts.The real issue was which leader would claim the presidential nominee spot, and the quarrel exposed deep wariness between the Nationalists — a party with a history of over a century that is also known as the Kuomintang, or K.M.T. — and the Taiwan People’s Party, which Mr. Ko, a surgeon and former mayor of Taipei, founded in 2019.“The K.M.T., as the grand old party, could never make way for an upstart party, so structurally, it was very difficult for them to work out how to work together,” said Brian Hioe, a founding editor of New Bloom, a Taiwanese magazine that takes a critical view of mainstream politics. On the other hand, Mr. Hioe added, “Ko Wen-je’s party has the need to differentiate itself from the K.M.T. — to show that it’s independent and different — and so working with the K.M.T. would be seen by many of his party membership as a betrayal.”A supporter of Kuomintang, or the long-established Nationalist Party, holding a flag outside the Central Election Commission in Taipei on Friday.Annabelle Chih/Getty ImagesMa Ying-jeou, the Nationalist president of Taiwan from 2008 to 2016, stepped in to try to broker an agreement between his party and Mr. Ko. Hopes rose on Thursday when Mr. Hou announced that he would be waiting at Mr. Ma’s office to hold negotiations with Mr. Ko.But it quickly became clear that Mr. Ko and Mr. Hou remained divided. Mr. Ko refused to go to Mr. Ma’s office, and insisted on talks at another location. Mr. Hou stayed put in Mr. Ma’s office for hours, waiting for Mr. Ko to give way. Eventually, Mr. Hou agreed to meet at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Taipei, and party functionaries announced with solemn specificity that the talks would happen in Room 2538.Dozens of journalists converged on the hotel, waiting for a possible announcement. Expectations rose when Mr. Hou entered a conference room where the journalists and live-feed cameras waited. But he sat with a fixed smile for about 20 minutes before Mr. Ko arrived, glowering. Mr. Gou, the magnate, opened proceedings with his tribute to Thanksgiving and calls for unity, recalling his wedding ceremony in the same hotel. But it soon became clear that Mr. Hou and Mr. Ko were no closer.On Friday, Taiwanese people had shared images online and quips ridiculing the opposition’s public feuding. Photographs of Room 2538, a suite at the Grand Hyatt, circulated on the internet. Some likened the spectacle to “The Break-up Ring,” a popular Taiwanese television show that featured quarreling couples and their in-laws airing their grievances on camera.Some drew a more somber conclusion: that dysfunction on the opposition side left Taiwan’s democracy weaker.“In a healthy democracy, No. 2 and No. 3 will collaborate to challenge No. 1,” said Wu Tzu-chia, the chairman of My Formosa, an online magazine. “This should be a very rigorous process, but in Taiwan, it’s become very crude, like buying meat and vegetables in the marketplace.” More

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      Republicans Agree on Foreign Policy — When It Comes to China

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      At first glance, last week’s Republican presidential debate revealed a party fractured over America’s role in the world. Ron DeSantis said he wouldn’t support additional aid to Ukraine unless Europe does more. Vivek Ramaswamy said he wouldn’t arm Ukraine no matter what. Chris Christie, Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, all staunch defenders of Kyiv, pounced. Within minutes, the altercations were so intense that the moderators struggled to regain control.But amid the discord, one note of agreement kept rising to the surface: that the true threat to America comes from Beijing. In justifying his reluctance to send more aid to Ukraine, Mr. DeSantis said he’d ensure that the United States does “what we need to do with China.” Mr. Ramaswamy denounced aiding Ukraine because the “real threat we face is communist China.” Ms. Haley defended such aid because “a win for Russia is a win for China.” Mr. Pence said Mr. Ramaswamy’s weakness on Ukraine would tempt Beijing to attack Taiwan.Regardless of their views on Ukraine, Republicans are united in focusing on China. They are returning to the principle that many championed at the beginning of the last Cold War. It’s neither internationalism nor isolationism. It’s Asia First.When Americans remember the early Cold War years, they often think of Europe: NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, which justified aiding Greece and Turkey. But for many leading Republicans at the time, those commitments were a distraction: The real menace lay on the other side of the globe.Senator Robert Taft, nicknamed “Mr. Republican” because of his stature in the party, opposed America’s entrance into NATO and declared in 1948 that “the Far East is ultimately even more important to our future peace and safety than is Europe.” The following year, Senator H. Alexander Smith, a Republican on the Foreign Policy and Armed Services Committee, warned that while the Truman administration was “preoccupied with Europe the real threat of World War III may be approaching us from the Asiatic side.” William Knowland, the Senate Republican leader from 1953 to 1958, was so devoted to supporting the Nationalist exiles who left the mainland after losing China’s civil war that he was called the “senator from Formosa,” as Taiwan was known at the time.Understanding why Republicans prioritized China then helps explain why they’re prioritizing it now. In her book “Asia First: China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism,” the historian Joyce Mao argues that Cold War era Republicans’ focus on China stemmed in part from a “spiritual paternalism that arguably carried over from the previous century.” In the late 19th century, when the United States was carving out a sphere of influence in the Pacific, China, with its vast population, held special allure for Americans interested in winning souls for Christ. The nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, who were Christians themselves, used this religious connection to drum up American support — first for their war against Communist rivals on the Chinese mainland and then, after they fled to the island of Taiwan, for their regime there.Many of America’s most influential Asia Firsters — like the Time magazine publisher Henry Luce — were either the children of American missionaries in China or had served as missionaries there themselves. The John Birch Society, whose fervent and conspiratorial brand of anti-Communism foreshadowed the right-wing populism of today, took its name from an Army captain and former missionary killed by Chinese communists at the end of World War II.Today, of course, Americans don’t need religious reasons to put Asia first. It boasts much of the world’s economic, political and military power, which is why the Biden administration focuses on the region, too. In Washington, getting tough on China is now a bipartisan affair. Still, the conservative tradition that Ms. Mao describes — which views China as a civilizational pupil turned civilizational threat — is critical to grasping why rank-and-file Republicans, far more than Democrats, fixate on the danger from Beijing.In March, a Gallup poll found that while Democrats were 23 points more likely to consider Russia a greater enemy than China, Republicans were a whopping 64 points more likely to say the reverse. There is evidence that this discrepancy stems in part from the fact that while President Vladimir Putin of Russia casts himself as a defender of conservative Christian values, President Xi Jinping leads a nonwhite superpower whose regime has spurned the Christian destiny many Americans once envisioned for it.In a 2021 study, the University of Delaware political scientists David Ebner and Vladimir Medenica found that white Americans who expressed higher degrees of racial resentment were more likely to perceive China as a military threat. And it is white evangelicals today — like the conservative Christians who anchored support for Chiang in the late 1940s and 1950s — who express the greatest animosity toward China’s government. At my request, the Pew Research Center crunched data gathered this spring comparing American views of China by religion and race. It found that white non-Hispanic evangelicals were 25 points more likely to hold a “very unfavorable” view of China than Americans who were religiously unaffiliated, 26 points more likely than Black Protestants and 33 points more likely than Hispanic Catholics.This is the Republican base. And its antipathy to China helps explain why many of the right-wing pundits and politicians often described as isolationists aren’t isolationists at all. They’re Asia Firsters. Tucker Carlson, who said last week that American policymakers hate Russia because it’s a “Christian country,” insisted in 2019 that America’s “main enemy, of course, is China, and the United States ought to be in a relationship with Russia aligned against China.” Mr. Ramaswamy, who is challenging Mr. DeSantis for second place in national polls, wants the United States to team up with Moscow against Beijing, too.And of course, the Republican front-runner for 2024, former President Donald Trump — deeply in tune with conservative voters — has obsessed over China since he exploded onto the national political stage eight years ago. Mr. Trump is often derided as an isolationist because of his hostility to NATO and his disdain for international treaties. But on China his rhetoric has been fierce. In 2016, he even said Beijing had been allowed to “rape our country.”Republicans may disagree on the best way forward in Ukraine. But overwhelmingly, they agree that China is the ultimate danger. And whether it’s Mr. Trump’s reference earlier this year to his former secretary of transportation as “Coco Chow” or House Republicans implying that Asian Americans in the Biden administration and Congress aren’t loyal to the United States, there’s mounting evidence that prominent figures on the American right see that danger in racial terms.That’s the problem with Republicans’ return to Asia First. Many in the party don’t only see China’s rise as a threat to American power. They see it as a threat to white Christian power, too.Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) is a professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also an editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Camp David summit signals a new cold war – this time with China | Observer editorial

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      If it sounds like a new cold war and looks like a new cold war, then it probably is a new cold war. For what other interpretation is to be placed on US president Joe Biden’s latest ramping up of diplomatic, economic and military pressure on China?Western officials tend to avoid the term, recalling as it does decades of hair-trigger confrontation with the former Soviet Union. They talk instead about enhanced security and defence cooperation and the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific region. But such bland generalisations belie the fact that Biden is now pushing back hard at a repressive, authoritarian regime in Beijing that he and many Americans believe is determined to overthrow the international democratic, geopolitical and legal order safeguarded by the US. Last week’s groundbreaking Camp David summit hosted by Biden for Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, and South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, perfectly fitted this agenda. It produced a series of measures aimed squarely at China and its “dangerous and aggressive behaviour”.They include a trilateral mechanism to deal with perceived security threats; expanded military exercises; and increased ballistic missile cooperation – despite the risk that China could retaliate in like fashion or use economic sanctions, as in the past, to punish export-dependent Tokyo and Seoul.For Japan, the Camp David agreement marks another significant stage in its journey away from postwar pacifism towards becoming a fully fledged, fully armed member of the US-led western democratic alliance. It will add to Tokyo’s sense of growing confrontation with China.For South Korea, the trilateral pact may come to be seen as the moment it finally moved on from the bitter feud with Japan over the latter’s 20th-century colonisation of the peninsula. Credit is due to Yoon, who has taken to describing Tokyo as a “partner” with shared values and interests.Biden’s success in bringing old enemies together is a notable achievement, too. He is hoping to pull off a similar feat with Israel and Saudi Arabia. The contrast with Donald Trump’s fatuous attempts to woo Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s nuclear-armed dictator, is striking.Improved three-way cooperation in facing down the threat posed by Pyongyang may be another benefit of Camp David. Defying UN sanctions, Kim has stepped up his intimidatory missile “tests” this year. China, disappointingly, has done little to stop him. Beijing’s ally, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, is positively encouraging him.While US officials are careful how they frame the new agreement, China is in no doubt it is aimed directly at itself. It follows Biden’s upgrading of the so-called Quad, which groups the US, India, Japan and Australia; the creation of Aukus, a security pact with Australia and the UK; and a raised US naval and air force profile in the Philippines, South China Sea and around Taiwan. In another message to Beijing, Biden will visit India next month.The numerous, ill-judged actions of President Xi Jinping’s regime have brought much of this down on its own head. Nevertheless, Beijing blames the west whose nefarious aim, it says, is containment designed to stifle China’s development. State media described Camp David as the launch of a “mini Nato” that will threaten regional security and exacerbate tensions.US officials reject the analogy. But the claim brings us back to the question of a new cold war. China evidently believes one has already begun. Is this really what Biden, the UK and regional allies want? If that is the case, they should have the courage to say so in terms – and explain what they plan to do if it turns “hot”. More

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      Taiwan Faces a #MeToo Wave, Set Off by a Netflix Hit

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      A torrent of sexual harassment accusations has prompted questions about the state of women’s rights on an island democracy that has long been one of Asia’s most progressive places.In the past few weeks, a wave of #MeToo allegations has raced to the very top of Taiwan’s political, judicial and arts scenes, forcing a new reckoning of the state of women’s rights on a democratic island that has long taken pride in being among Asia’s most progressive places.Nearly every day, fresh allegations emerge, setting off discussions on talk shows and on social media, with newspaper commentaries and activist groups calling for stronger protections for victims.In many ways, Taiwan stands out for the significant strides that women have made that helped elect the island’s first female president and bolster laws against rape and sexual assault, before #MeToo took off in the United States. But the flood of new sexual harassment accusations points to what activists and scholars say is entrenched sexism that leaves women vulnerable at work, and a culture that is quick to blame victims and cover up accusations against powerful men.President Tsai, in 2020, with other officials. Some of the earliest #MeToo allegations centered on senior members of her political party, posing risks to the party’s credibility with younger voters.Makoto Lin/Taiwan Presidential Office, via ReutersThe outpouring of complaints was set off by a popular Netflix drama about Taiwanese politics called “Wave Makers,” which featured a subplot about a female member of a political party telling her boss that she had been sexually harassed by a high-ranking party member. Her boss promises to help her report the harassment, and in an indication of how often such politically inconvenient complaints are ignored, says, “Let’s not just let this go this time.”That quote from the fictional supervisor became a clarion call, inspiring more than 100 accusers, mostly women, to speak out on social media, sharing their accounts of unwanted kisses, groping and in a few cases, attempted rape. They described the indignities endured at the workplace, including inappropriate touching and unwanted advances by male colleagues and bosses, as well as lewd comments. Some of their posts have been shared thousands of times.The stakes are particularly high for President Tsai Ing-wen’s governing Democratic Progressive Party. Senior party and government officials were among the first accused of harassment and of seeking to silence accusers, forcing Ms. Tsai to apologize twice for her party’s mishandling of internal complaints. The criticism runs counter to the party’s record as a champion of liberal values, which includes legalizing same-sex marriage in 2019 and granting gay couples the right to adopt earlier this year. And it poses risks to the party’s credibility with younger voters ahead of a presidential election next year.“The Democratic Progressive Party has regarded itself as the governing party that supports gender equality,” Fan Yun, a party legislator who is also a professor specializing in gender issues at National Taiwan University, said in a telephone interview. “The Netflix show was seen by others as a snapshot of what’s happening within the party, and it has brought about great impact.”A scene from Wave Makers. A line from the show about properly addressing a sexual harassment complaint, “Let’s not just let this go this time,” resonated in Taiwan.NetflixAmong the most senior figures accused of harassment is Yen Chih-fa, who denied the allegation but resigned from his post as an adviser to President Tsai. Taiwan’s highest legal body said it would investigate a complaint against a former chief justice, Lee Po-tao. Tsai Mu-lin, a high-level party official, has been accused of bullying a female party staff member into silence when she reported that a male colleague had tried to enter her hotel room.Mr. Tsai, who is not related to the president, has since stepped down.The woman who accused him, Chen Wen-hsuan, said she felt empowered to speak out publicly by the other women who had shared their experiences. “This movement has taught me that no injustice should be swallowed,” she said. “After all, we can’t just let it go.”Allegations have also been made against men from the main opposition party, the Kuomintang, as well as across Taiwan’s society more broadly, including in academia, journalism, and most recently, entertainment.Mickey Huang, a TV personality, apologized after being accused by a woman he met at work of kissing her without her consent and forcing her to be photographed nude. Aaron Yan, a pop star, apologized after an ex-boyfriend accused him of secretly shooting videos of them having sex, when the ex-boyfriend was 16, a minor. Local prosecutors said this week they would investigate the allegation.Mickey Huang, a TV personality, apologized after being accused by a woman of kissing her without her consent and forcing her to be photographed nude.Visual China Group, via Getty ImagesIn some ways, the #MeToo movement points to a generational shift in attitudes brought about by the hard-fought advances won by women’s rights activists in decades past. Taiwan’s younger generation started learning about gender equality in elementary school, as part of curriculum changes enacted in 2004, and have since come of age.But workplaces are struggling to keep pace.Taiwan’s younger generation has “a higher awareness of gender diversity and equality than the older generation,” said Wei-Ting Yen, an assistant professor of government at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania. “However, the workplace that young people are entering is still dominated by the older generation.”Lawmakers have pledged to quickly pass changes to laws to make workplaces and schools safer by holding organizations accountable for protecting victims of harassment. The changes would require organizations to track complaints and provide independent, third-party review panels if needed. Women’s rights groups have called for Taiwan to extend the statute of limitations for sexual harassment complaints, currently at one year.But activists also say more needs to be done to address the culture of sexism that underlies the misconduct and deters many women from speaking out. A survey by Taiwan’s labor ministry last year showed that only a tiny percentage of female respondents who said they had encountered sexual harassment at work had filed complaints. Activists and scholars in Taiwan say that men in power, whether they are supervisors in workplaces or police officers or judges, are often seen as sympathetic toward other men in power, and likely to blame the victim.This month, Lai Yu-fen, 27, accused a Polish diplomat, Bartosz Rys, on her Facebook and Twitter accounts, of what Ms. Lai described as sexual assault last year. She said that when she filed a police report, investigators asked why she had apologized to the diplomat as she rejected his advances, and why she had not told her family about the encounter. She said a defense lawyer gossiped about her to mutual friends. “I want to take back my own story,” Ms. Lai said in an interview.The Polish Office in Taipei, Poland’s de facto embassy in Taiwan, confirmed that it cooperated with the authorities. Prosecutors decided not to charge Mr. Rys, whose posting ended last year and who later left Taiwan. He did not respond to an emailed request for comment, but said on his Twitter page that Ms. Lai had sought money in exchange for dropping the accusation. (She said the request for money was part of negotiating a legal settlement.)To those working in Taiwan’s civil society, perhaps the most concerning of allegations are those directed at activists seen as influential leaders in the rights community. Lee Yuan-chun, 29, an activist, this month publicly accused Wang Dan, a veteran Chinese pro-democracy dissident, of pressing him onto a bed and asking him for sex in 2014. He said he was suing Mr. Wang.Wang Dan, middle, a Chinese pro-democracy dissident, was accused this month by an activist of pressing him onto a bed and asking him for sex. Andres Kudacki/Associated PressIn a statement, Mr. Wang said he hoped that the public would reserve judgment until a court ruled on the lawsuit. “As a public figure, one’s private life will be subject to more stringent scrutiny,” he said. “Through this incident I will pay more attention to this in the future.” More

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      Your Tuesday Briefing: China’s Display of Force Around Taiwan

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      Also, President Biden prepares to visit Northern Ireland and Ireland.A Chinese Navy ship near Taiwan yesterday.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesChina’s military show around TaiwanChina sent record numbers of military aircraft, naval ships and an aircraft carrier near Taiwan yesterday on the final day of military exercises. The spectacle capped three days of drills designed to put pressure on the self-governed island.On Monday alone, Taiwan said that 91 Chinese military aircraft had flown into its Air Defense Identification Zone, a buffer that’s broader than Taiwan’s sovereign airspace. That number marked the highest daily total of such Chinese sorties since 2020, when Taiwan began regularly releasing the data. The previous high was 71, set in December and again on Saturday.A first with fighter jets: During the exercises, Chinese J-15 jets took off from the Shandong aircraft carrier deployed near Taiwan’s east coast. The flights appeared to mark the first time that these fighter jets have been tracked entering Taiwan’s zone, an analyst said.China deployed the Shandong to reinforce the country’s claim that it could “surround and encircle” Taiwan, a Taiwan-based researcher said: “That is to say that it can do it on our east coast as well as our west coast.”Context: The drills were in retaliation for a visit to the U.S. by Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen. Still, experts said that the drills were smaller and less menacing than those held after Nancy Pelosi, then the U.S. speaker, visited Taiwan in August.Separately, two of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers, Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, were sentenced to 14 and 12 years, some of the lengthiest punishments in years and an indication of how the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, has crushed the last vestiges of dissent.Orangemen, who do not support Irish unification, marked St. Patrick’s Day last month. Andrew Testa for The New York TimesAn Irish welcome for BidenPresident Biden will begin a five-day visit to Northern Ireland and Ireland today. The president, whose family has Irish roots, is known to approach Irish issues from a sentimental rather than a diplomatic perspective. “Being Irish has shaped my entire life,” Biden once said.In Belfast, Biden will celebrate the Good Friday Agreement, which was signed 25 years ago and ended decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.In the U.S., the peace accord is a cherished diplomatic achievement: Bill Clinton mediated between nationalists, who are mostly Catholic and seek a united Ireland, and unionists, who are mostly Protestant and want to stay with the U.K. In 1998, Biden supported the peace process, but his Irish pride has sometimes led him to take sides, critics say.“I think it’s fair to say that Biden is the most Irish of U.S. presidents, except maybe for Kennedy,” an author of a book about Ireland and the White House said.Family ties: Biden’s itinerary in Ireland includes potential visits to not one but two ancestral homes. Locals are preparing to celebrate Biden with all of the fanfare their towns can muster.An eye on 2024: On the eve of his departure, Biden said that he planned to run again for the presidency, though he did not formally announce a campaign.Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said he had decided to put aside his differences with his defense minister.Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated PressNetanyahu reverses firing of ministerBenjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, announced yesterday that he had reinstated his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who had criticized the contentious plan to overhaul Israel’s justice system. Gallant’s ouster set off protests, prompting the government to suspend its judicial plan until the summer.The reversal came amid a wider effort within Israel to project a sense of unity at a time of deep social division and upheaval — and amid fears that Israel’s enemies had been emboldened by the instability created by the judicial plan.Gallant’s reinstatement was greeted with relief in much of Israel. There have been growing calls for a show of strength after a rise in attacks from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, as well as violence in the occupied West Bank. Many Israelis were particularly alarmed by a rare barrage of rockets from Lebanon last week.Context: Gallant was fired after he said the plan to limit the influence of the Supreme Court had provoked disquiet within the military he oversees, and that it was endangering Israel’s national security.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificThe Dalai Lama’s office said the actions had been lighthearted.Ashwini Bhatia/Associated PressThe Dalai Lama apologized after a video surfaced online showing him kissing a boy on the lips and then saying to the child, “Suck my tongue.”A group of opposition lawmakers in South Korea denounced the U.S. for spying after leaked documents revealed sensitive information about supplying Ukraine with artillery shells.From Opinion: Se-Woong Koo, a South Korean-born writer, argues that Koreans should forgive Japan for historical wrongs and turn their focus on China.The War in UkraineRussian police officers watched military aircraft fly over the Kremlin in 2020.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesUkraine’s air defenses need a big influx of munitions to keep Russia from changing the course of the war, leaked Pentagon documents suggest.In this video, see how Ukrainian military psychologists are training soldiers to confront trauma.The Morning newsletter is about Evan Gershkovich, an American reporter detained in Russia.Around The WorldItaly sent rescue teams to help about 1,200 migrants aboard two overcrowded boats in the Mediterranean, fueling concern about the volume of people attempting the dangerous crossing from Africa to Europe.A man shot and killed four fellow employees at a bank in Kentucky before he was killed by police.Eight people are missing after a building collapsed in an explosion in Marseille, France.Other Big StoriesSyrian truffles are a prized delicacy.Louai Beshara/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTruffle hunting, an economic lifeline in Syria during desperate times, has become a dangerous pursuit: At least 84 people have been killed this season, two groups said, either by land mines, gunmen or after being kidnapped.Bitcoin mines can cause pollution and raise electricity bills for people who live around them.An Asian elephant at a Berlin zoo taught herself to peel bananas.A Morning ReadPreparing har gow, a traditional dumpling, at Shun Lee West.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesWhen a new outpost of Shun Lee, a storied Chinese restaurant in New York City, opened last year, it took only a few bites before fans realized that something was off. Soon, tips flooded the local press. My colleague Katie Rosman dug into the very New York drama, which is at the heart of the history of Chinese food on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.ARTS AND IDEASA check-in line for a flight from New York to Shanghai last week.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesChina: Open, but hard to get toDespite China’s loosened visa rules and relaxed pandemic restrictions, would-be visitors are struggling to book plane tickets: Prices are high, and there are fewer direct flights.That’s partly because airlines have been slow to ramp up their flights. They’re hesitant to add flights when there are practical hurdles: Many visitors need a negative P.C.R. test before departure, consulates are scrambling to handle visa paperwork and about 20 percent of Chinese passports expired during the pandemic.Tensions between the U.S. and China also play a role. During the pandemic, the countries, the world’s two largest economies, suspended each other’s flights in a political tit-for-tat. Airlines need the approval of both countries’ aviation authorities to increase routes.The war in Ukraine is another factor. Russia has banned U.S. and European carriers from its airspace, meaning flights to China now require longer routes with more fuel and flight crew.As a result, families suffer. Jessie Huang, who lives in New Jersey, hopes to visit China this summer but has struggled to find tickets under $2,000. She has not seen her 86-year-old father, who lives on an island off the coast of Shanghai, in seven years. “I’m just missing my family,” she said.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.A reader submitted her French mother’s recipe for tarragon-Cognac roast chicken.What to ReadIn “Calling Ukraine,” an office satire, a lost American expat takes up a job at a call center.What to Watch“Showing Up” is a gently funny portrait of a creative rivalry between two artists.TravelClimate change is making turbulence more common. Fasten your seatbelt.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Deficiency (four letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. — AmeliaP.S. The Times is inviting illustrators to share their work with our art directors for a portfolio review. Apply here.“The Daily” is on Tennessee’s Republican-controlled House, which has expelled two young Black Democrats.Was this newsletter useful? Send us your feedback at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      in US Politics

      China sends dozens of warplanes towards Taiwan as US urges restraint amid military drills

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      China sent dozens of warplanes towards Taiwan for a second day of military drills on Sunday, launching simulated attacks in retaliation to the island’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, meeting the US House speaker during a brief visit to the US.Taiwan’s defence ministry said it was monitoring the movements of China’s missile forces, as the US said it too was on alert.China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sent 70 warplanes, including fighter jets, reconnaissance craft and refuellers, into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) on Sunday morning, according to Taiwan’s defence ministry. It did not provide a map or locations, but said 31 planes had crossed the median line – the de facto border in the Taiwan strait between Taiwan and China.The PLA had announced the immediate start to three days of drills on Saturday morning. By 7pm that evening it had sent 71 warplanes and eight ships into Taiwan’s ADIZ with almost 60 crossing the median line.Taiwan’s ministry said the activity had severely violated Indo-Pacific peace and stability, and had a negative effect on international security and economies. It urged other countries to speak out against China’s actions.Chinese state television reported that multiple units carried out simulated strikes on key targets in Taiwan and the surrounding sea. The Chinese military’s eastern theatre command put out a short animation of the simulated attacks on its WeChat account, showing missiles fired from land, sea and air into Taiwan with two of them exploding in flames as they hit their targets.A Taiwan security source told Reuters that on Saturday the Chinese drills around the Bashi channel, which separates Taiwan from the Philippines, included simulated attacks on aircraft carrier groups as well as anti-submarine drills.Last August, after a visit to Taipei by then US House speaker Nancy Pelosi, China staged war games around Taiwan including firing missiles into waters close to the island, though it has yet to announce similar drills this time.Chinese maritime authorities have issued just one notice of a live fire zone, in a small area of water near Pingtan, in the Taiwan strait. The mandatory notice warns air and seacraft to keep clear of the area, which is just a fraction of the areas designated for live fire during last year’s drills.While in Los Angeles last week, on what was officially billed a transit on her way back from Central America, Tsai met the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, despite Beijing’s warnings against the meeting.The de facto US embassy in Taiwan said on Sunday that the US was monitoring China’s drills around Taiwan closely and is “comfortable and confident” it has sufficient resources and capabilities regionally to ensure peace and stability.US channels of communication with China remain open and the US had consistently urged restraint and no change to the status quo, said a spokesperson for the American Institute in Taiwan, which serves as an embassy in the absence of formal diplomatic ties.Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei in favour of Beijing in 1979 but is bound by law to provide the island with the means to defend itself.China, which has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control, says Taiwan is the most important and sensitive issue in its relations with the US, and the topic is a frequent source of tensions.Beijing considers Tsai a separatist and has rebuffed her repeated calls for talks. Tsai says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.China has over the past three years or so stepped up its military pressure against Taiwan, flying regular missions around Taiwan, though not in its territorial airspace or over the island itself.Chinese state media said the aircraft flown into the ADIZ this weekend were armed with live weapons.Taiwanese air force jets also typically carry live weapons when they scramble to see off Chinese incursions.Late on Saturday, Taiwan’s Ocean Affairs Council, which runs the coast guard, put out footage on its YouTube channel showing one of its ships shadowing a Chinese warship, though it did not give an exact location.“You are seriously harming regional peace, stability and security. Please immediately turn around and leave. If you continue to proceed we will take expulsion measures,” a coast guard officer says by radio to the Chinese ship.Other footage showed a Taiwanese warship, the Di Hua, accompanying the coast guard ship in what the coast guard officer calls a “standoff” with the Chinese warship.Still, civilian flights around Taiwan, including to Kinmen and Matsu, two groups of Taiwan-controlled islands right next to the Chinese coast, have continued as normal.In August, civilian air traffic was disrupted after China announced effective no-fly zones in several areas close to Taiwan where it was firing missiles.Meanwhile the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said in an interview published on Sunday that Europe must not be a “follower” of either the US or China on Taiwan, saying that the bloc risks entanglement in “crises that aren’t ours”.His comments risk riling Washington and highlight divisions in the European Union over how to approach China, as the US steps up confrontation with its closest rival and Beijing draws closer to Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.“The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must be followers and adapt ourselves to the American rhythm and a Chinese overreaction,” Macron told media as he returned on Friday from a three-day state visit to Beijing.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      in Elections

      Politics Complicates Chinese Reaction to U.S. Visit by Taiwan’s President

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      For Beijing, showing displeasure too openly carries risks, particularly of harming the chances for its preferred party in Taiwan’s coming presidential election.China fired off a volley of condemnations on Thursday after Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, met the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, but it held off from the kind of military escalation that threatened a crisis last summer, when Mr. McCarthy’s predecessor visited Taiwan.China’s angry reaction to the meeting between Ms. Tsai and Mr. McCarthy in California followed weeks of warnings from Beijing, which treats Taiwan as an illegitimate breakaway region whose leaders should be shunned abroad. Despite the combative words, any retaliation by Beijing in coming days may be tempered by the difficult calculations facing China’s leader, Xi Jinping, including over Taiwan’s coming presidential race.Soon after the meeting at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, China’s ministry of defense, foreign ministry and other offices in Beijing issued warnings to Taiwan and the United States.“Do not go down this dark path of ‘riding on the back of the U.S. to seek independence,” said the Chinese Communist Party’s office for Taiwan policy. “Any bid for ‘independence’ will be smashed to pieces by the power of sons and daughters of China opposed to ‘independence’ and advancing unification.”So far though, Beijing’s pugnacious language has not been matched by a big military response like the one last year. After the previous speaker, Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan in August in a show of solidarity, China’s People’s Liberation Army held days of miliary exercises simulating a blockade of Taiwan.Early Thursday, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense detected one Chinese military plane that entered the “air defense identification zone” off Taiwan — an informal area where aircraft are supposed to declare their presence — and three Chinese navy vessels in seas off the island. Last year, China announced its blockade exercise on the same day that Ms. Pelosi arrived in Taipei.Taiwan military vessels docked at a Navy base in Suao, Taiwan, on Thursday.Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times“China is not doing the kind of saber rattling that they were doing before the Pelosi visit. They haven’t set the stage in the same way,” said Patrick M. Cronin, the Asia-Pacific security chair at the Hudson Institute, who attended a closed-door speech Ms. Tsai gave in New York last week. “They’re going to have their hands close around the throat of Taiwan, but we’ll have to see how they squeeze.”Mr. Xi, anointed last month to a third term as president, wants to deter Taiwan from high-level contacts abroad. Yet he is also trying to improve China’s relations with Western governments, restore economic growth and aid the chances of his favored party in Taiwan’s presidential election in January. An extended military crisis over Taiwan could hurt all three goals, especially the last one.“On the one hand, there’s a desire to signal to Taiwan, to the U.S. and also to Taiwan voters, that efforts to raise Taiwan’s international profile are unacceptable from China’s standpoint,” said Scott L. Kastner, a professor of politics at the University of Maryland. But, he added, “on balance the incentives are for the People’s Republic of China to act with more restraint than usual in the run-up to the election.”China’s ties with Europe, Australia and other Western governments have been damaged by disputes over Covid, Chinese political influence abroad, and Mr. Xi’s ties to Russia. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is in China this week, and he is among the European leaders who Mr. Xi hopes can be coaxed away from Washington’s hard line on China.President Emmanuel Macron of France is welcomed by Chinese Premier Minister Li Qiang at the Great Hall of the People on Thursday in Beijing.Pool photo by Thibault CamusA menacing display by the People’s Liberation Army could also hurt the presidential hopes of Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Nationalists, which favors stronger ties with China. Ms. Tsai must step down next year, and a crisis in the Taiwan Strait could help galvanize support for her Democratic Progressive Party and undercut the Nationalists’ case for more cooperation with Beijing.“Beijing will want to visibly register its displeasure, lest its leaders be accused at home of tolerating Taiwan’s efforts to move further away from China,” said Ryan Hass, a former adviser on China policy to President Obama and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “At the same time, Beijing also will want to preserve some headroom for further escalation should future circumstances require.”In Beijing and Taipei, memories linger of 1995, when Lee Teng-hui, then president of Taiwan, gave a speech celebrating Taiwan’s democratic transformation while visiting the United States. China condemned Mr. Lee’s visit and responded with military exercises that resumed in 1996. President Lee soundly won another term that year, despite Beijing’s missiles.President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan delivering a lecture at his alma mater, Cornell University, in 1995. Bob Strong/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2020, Ms. Tsai rebounded from low approval ratings to win a second term after a Beijing-backed crackdown on protests in Hong Kong repulsed voters in Taiwan.“Beijing likely has learned from past experience that whenever it uses tough fire-and-fury rhetoric around Taiwan’s presidential election, usually that invites voter backlash,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist with the Taiwan Studies Program of the Australian National University in Canberra.Still, if Taiwanese voters felt that Ms. Tsai was goading Beijing, that could hurt her standing and her party’s image. Her trip to the United States reflected her careful calculus: She sought to deepen Taiwan’s ties with Washington, while avoiding giving China an excuse for a new round of threatening military exercises.In California, Ms. Tsai thanked the Republican and Democrat lawmakers who attended. “Their presence and unwavering support reassure the people of Taiwan that we are not isolated,” she said, standing next to Mr. McCarthy.Ms. Tsai and Mr. McCarthy at a news conference at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Wednesday.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesMany in Taiwan, especially supporters of Ms. Tsai’s government, believe that such meetings are important, despite Beijing’s warnings.“Taiwan is already very alone, and it’s very dangerous if we don’t show we have friends, especially the United States,” said Kao Teng-sheng, a businessman in Chiayi, a city in southern Taiwan, who previously ran a factory in southern China. “If she did not meet McCarthy, that would also be dangerous for Taiwan. It would look like we are panicking.”Taiwan’s presidential race is likely to come down to a contest between the Democratic Progressive Party’s Lai Ching-te, currently the vice president, and a Nationalist contender, possibly Hou You-yi, the popular mayor of New Taipei City. Beijing would prefer a Nationalist leader in Taipei, and over recent days has been hosting, and feting, Ma Ying-jeou, the previous Nationalist president.“In military threats, China’s attitude won’t soften, but it will also invite those like Ma Ying-jeou to China,” said I-Chung Lai, a former director of the China affairs section of the Democratic Progressive Party and now a senior adviser to the Taiwan Thinktank in Tapei.Beijing’s dismal relations with Washington may also factor into Mr. Xi’s calculations. At a summit in November, he and President Biden tried to rein in tensions over technology bans, military rivalry, human rights, and Chinese support for Russia.U.S. President Biden meeting with President Xi Jinping of China in Bali, Indonesia, in November 2022.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThose efforts stalled in February after the Biden administration revealed that a Chinese surveillance balloon was floating over the United States, and Mr. Xi affirmed his support for Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, during a summit in Moscow, despite the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A new crisis over Taiwan could push the strains between Beijing and Washington to a dangerous limit.Some Taiwanese analysts have said that China may announce some military exercises around Taiwan after Mr. Ma, the visiting former president, returns to Taipei on Friday.Even with Taiwan’s looming election, “if the Chinese Communist Party faces what it believes is a violation of its very core fundamental positions or interests, then it seems it won’t go soft on Taiwan,” said Huang Kwei-Bo, a professor of international relations at the National Chengchi University in Taipei who is a former deputy secretary-general of the Nationalist Party. More

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      in US Politics

      Taiwan monitoring Chinese strike group off the coast after president meets US speaker

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      Taiwan authorities are monitoring Chinese military activity including a carrier strike group about 200 nautical miles (370km) off the main island’s coastline, after the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, met US House speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles.In the meeting, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, McCarthy stressed the urgency of arms deliveries to Taiwan, while Tsai praised the “strong and unique partnership” with the US..Taiwan’s defence minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, said on Thursday that the island’s military was studying the carrier group, led by the Shandong aircraft carrier. Chiu said the group – a fleet of navy vessels led by an aircraft carrier – appeared to be on a training exercise and no planes had been detected taking off from the ship, but the timing was “sensitive”. He later confirmed that the US aircraft carrier Nimitz, which had been participating in joint drills with Japan and Korea in the East China Sea this week, was also in the same area as the Shandong on Thursday.The carrier group was sent to waters south-east of Taiwan’s main island on Wednesday, shortly before Tsai and McCarthy met in Los Angeles.Japan’s defence ministry confirmed it was also monitoring the strike group, which it detected 300km from Okinawa on Wednesday evening. The ministry said the Shandong was accompanied by the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) frigate Liuzhou and a fast combat support ship as it travelled east towards the Philippines Sea, entering the Pacific Ocean for the first time.Separately, Japan said a PLAN guided-missile destroyer had been detected sailing between Taiwan and the Japanese island of Yonaguni, about 100km off Taiwan’s coast on Tuesday. Taiwan’s defence ministry would not confirm or comment on the detection.Taiwan’s defence ministry also reported three additional PLAN vessels and one anti-submarine helicopter operating near Taiwan in the 24 hours to Thursday morning.Chiu said a separate patrol of the Taiwan Strait announced by Chinese maritime authorities on Wednesday was not a military exercise, but appeared to be Beijing attempting to set a “new normal” in terms of enforcing their domestic law in wider maritime spaces. China’s coastguard, which comes under the command of the central military commission, claims authority to stop and inspect vessels in the area under a controversial 2021 law, though it is not believed to have done so before. The Taiwan defence ministry has instructed Taiwanese vessels, including cargo and ferry services, to not cooperate with attempts by this patrol to board and inspect them.Beijing has reacted angrily to the meeting between Taiwan’s leader and McCarthy, who is the second in line to the US presidency, accusing the pair of undermining its claim over Taiwan, conniving on “separatist” aims, and degrading China-US relations.McCarthy, a Republican who became the most senior figure to meet a Taiwanese leader on American soil in decades, was joined by a bipartisan group of US politicians who voiced support for dialogue with Taiwan amid simmering tensions with China.“We must continue the arms sales to Taiwan and make sure such sales reach Taiwan on a very timely basis,” McCarthy said at a news conference after the meeting, adding that he believed there was bipartisan agreement on this. “Second, we must strengthen our economic cooperation, particularly with trade and technology.”Beijing quickly denounced the meeting. Its foreign ministry said in statement that China will take “resolute and effective measures to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”A China defence ministry spokesperson called on the US to “stop its blatant interference in China’s internal affairs”.“We firmly oppose all forms of official interaction between the United States and Taiwan and any visit by leader of the Taiwan authorities to the United States in any name or under whatever pretext,” it said in a statement.China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, a position the government in Taipei strongly contests. Tsai says they are already a sovereign nation, and Taiwan’s future is for its people to decide.It is the second time Tsai has met the holder of the high-ranking office in less than a year, having welcomed McCarthy’s predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan in August. That visit, which took place on what China considers to be sovereign soil, provoked a stronger reaction from Beijing, including days of live-fire military exercises around Taiwan.So far, the reaction to the California meeting is far more muted. It is understood the McCarthy meeting was held on US soil instead of in Taiwan as McCarthy originally wanted, at least in part to reduce its provocativeness. On Thursday, Taiwan’s national security chief also noted the presidents of France and the European Union were currently visiting China, and “China must practice peaceful diplomacy”.McCarthy told Tsai a shared belief in democracy and freedom formed “the bedrock” of their enduring relationship.“The friendship between the people of Taiwan and America is a matter of profound importance to the free world, and it is critical to maintain economic freedom peace and regional stability,” he said.While stressing that there was no need for retaliation from China after the meeting, McCarthy also said he looked forward to, “more meeting like this in the future”.Republican Mike Gallagher, chair of the House Chinese Communist party committee, responded to China’s objections to the meeting, saying: “If the duly elected leader of one of our most important democratic partners can’t meet with American leaders on American soil, then we are merely feeding the crocodile that will eventually eat us.”Tsai’s US stops have been attended by crowds of pro- and anti-Taiwan protesters. The opposing groups scuffled outside the Ronald Reagan library, and were separated by police. Wednesday’s meeting was also attended by more than a dozen Democratic and Republican lawmakers, highlighting the bipartisan consensus in Congress when it comes to supporting Taiwan.Tsai thanked them for their “unwavering support”, which she said “reassures the people of Taiwan that we are not isolated and we are not alone”.Since 1979, the US has officially recognised the People’s Republic of China as the sole government of the “one China” that is mainland China and Taiwan. But the US also sells arms to Taiwan to deter any military advances from Beijing, something that McCarthy said should continue.He drew an explicit comparison between Hong Kong and Taiwan, saying that when China “reneged” on its promise to allow Hong Kong autonomy for 50 years after the handover to Chinese rule, “that harmed [Beijing’s reputation] around the world”.Michael Swaine, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a thinktank, warned that the meeting could accelerate the downward spiral of US-China relations. He warned that it could trigger a “show of resolve” from Beijing, which could itself “drive Washington to move even closer to Taiwan in order to demonstrate its own resolve”.On Wednesday the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told Euronews that a move by China to annex Taiwan would have far reaching repercussions “for quite literally every country on Earth”.Chi Hui Lin and Reuters contributed to this report More