Jaushieh Joseph Wu
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Republic of China (Taiwan)
September 10, 2019
(As prepared for Delivery)
Good morning, everyone! I am delighted to attend the opening ceremony of this workshop. Let me welcome all the participants to Taiwan, as well as acknowledge several special guests:
Acting Assistant Secretary Busby;
Director Christensen of the American Institute in Taiwan;
Deputy Japanese Representative Nishiumi;
Swedish Representative Jevrell;
NDI Vice President Bryan; and
IRI Senior Advisor Studdart;
I also want to express my utmost appreciation to Speaker Su, Chairman of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy and the great team here at the TFD, the AIT, as well as my colleagues at MOFA for making this workshop possible.
This year, Taiwan and the United States jointly organized a series of events to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the enactment of the Taiwan Relations Act. This workshop is part of that series and truly showcases how multifaceted the US-Taiwan relations has become. This workshop also marks the 20th event held under the Global Cooperation and Training Framework, a platform where Taiwan and the US can share experience and expertise with the rest of the world to confront regional and global challenges. Over the past four years, the results were even more fruitful than we had expected, and we are very excited to see more like-mined partners work closely at this platform.
I intend to keep my remarks brief, but I do want to take a moment to recognize the invaluable support from our co-hosts and partners. We welcome our partners from the civil society, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute; we appreciate Japan's commitment to cohosting every GCTF workshop since the beginning of this year, and I also want to welcome Sweden to cohost this workshop for the first time. I am immensely proud of how far GCTF has come. We all know my very good friend Brent has played a major role behind it. And thank you, Brent.
Today we are here to discuss how to counter the spread of disinformation. It is posing a serious threat to our democracy. Taiwan is at the forefront of the battle to defend the democratic system. Especially when Taiwan approaches the presidential election early next year, our challenges to deal with the false information are higher than ever.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo openly praised Taiwan as a reliable partner, a democratic success story and a force for good in the world. I am here to tell you we are determined to safeguard our democracy, and I am confident that by working together with like-minded countries and partners, we will overcome this challenge.
Once again, I want to thank you all for taking part in this meaningful event. And I wish you all a productive workshop. Thank you very much!