Arms sales a clear breach of promise

Wednesday marked the 40th anniversary of the United States-China Joint Communique on United States Arms Sales to Taiwan, in which the US promised to gradually reduce its arms sales to the island on the basis of its sales worth $192 million in 1979.

However malleable the document, which is also known as the August 17 Communique, might be in the eyes of Washington as far as its rhetoric is concerned, what cannot be denied is the promise the US made to gradually reduce its arms sales to the island in order to maintain sound bilateral relations between the two countries.

However, what the US has done has proved that it is not a country of its word. The total arms sales to Taiwan have amounted to more than $70 billion in the past 43 years since 1979. With the approval of $108 million arms sales to the island by the US State Department in recent days, the Joe Biden administration has already approved five batches of arms sales to Taiwan in only a year and half since it took office.