Ambassador Alexander Tah-ray Yui speaks at the Concordia Annual Summit on Sept. 24, 2024, in New York City. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)
"That’s an important incentive for Taiwanese companies to come to the United States and invest – but also vice versa for U.S. companies to go to Taiwan," he said. "We are the only one of the large trading partners without this treatment, which is worrying for the whole country right now."
By a vote of 423 to 1, the House last Congress passed the United States-Taiwan Expedited Double-Tax Relief Act, legislation that prevents double taxation on cross-border investments.
The ambassador also offered a sobering assessment of China’s increasingly belligerent posture in the Taiwan Strait and across the Indo-Pacific.
"We are concerned," Yui said. "The [People’s Liberation] Army and Navy are increasing their activities around Taiwan, harassing our territorial waters and airspace. These provocations are constant."
While emphasizing that "we don’t want war," he noted that the U.S. and regional partners have begun ramping up their own defenses, recognizing the threat.
"China is an existential threat to Taiwan," said Rep. August Pfluger. (Getty Images)
"Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress this week. He added that such an outcome could put the U.S. economy and its supply chains in a choke hold.
"China is undertaking a historic military buildup and actively rehearsing for an invasion of Taiwan," he said.
"These aggressive maneuvers are not routine exercises, they are rehearsals for a forced unification," Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added in his own testimony.
Taiwan has recently renewed an effort to purge its ranks of Chinese sympathizers, indicting four people on Tuesday suspected of spying for China that had infiltrated the presidential office.
Two Chinese aircraft carriers spotted conducting operations in the Pacific demonstrated the country’s "expansionist" aims, Taiwan Defense Minister Wellington Koo said Wednesday.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"Crossing from the first island chain into the second island chain sends a definite political message and their expansionist nature can be seen," he told reporters in Taipei.
The first island chain refers to the region from Japan to Taiwan and the Philippines to Borneo and the second island chain spreads farther into the Pacific, toward the U.S. territory of Guam.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/taiwan-ambassador-urges-senate-pass-tax-agreement-speed-up-military-sales-counter-china-threat