If this were the natural resources committee, we would have to saw you in half to count the rings, but we don't. Happy birthday, Mr. Chong. Where is Ms. Desbiens? We need her in here to sing Happy Birthday.
With that, we do have to thank Dr. Antoine Bondaz, director of the Taiwan program at the Foundation for Strategic Research and an associate professor, for rescuing us and agreeing to come on an hour early. We very much appreciate that. I'll ask Dr. Bondaz to give us a five-minute opening statement.
Before we do that, though, I would also like to welcome to our group tonight Mr. McCauley and Mr. Iacono. Mr. Iacono was in Taiwan with our colleague Judy Sgro a few weeks ago and will have some reflections on that.
With regard to the business at hand, then, we'll go to Dr. Bondaz for an opening statement of five minutes.