The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said it was “gravely concerned” over reports that Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen plans to visit the US and meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in California.
“We are gravely concerned over this and have made serious démarches to the US side demanding clarification,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters.
She added that Beijing “firmly opposes any form of official interaction between the US and the Taiwan region, firmly opposes any visit by ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist leaders to the US in any name under whatever pretext, and firmly opposes the US having any form of contact with ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist elements.”
According to The Financial Times, Tsai is planning to visit the US in April, and Taiwanese officials convinced McCarthy to meet her there instead of traveling to Taiwan over fears of provoking a major Chinese response. When then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visited Taiwan last August, China responded by launching its largest-ever military exercises around the island.
Tsai last made the trip to the US in 2019, and Beijing’s response was said to be muted at the time, but tensions between the US and China over Taiwan have significantly increased since then. Analysts told The South China Morning Post that it’s possible China could still respond severely whether Tsai meets McCarty in Taipei or in the US.
“I don’t think Beijing would see much difference between the two [arrangements] and [it] is almost certainly going to take forceful measures to retaliate if Tsai’s trip goes ahead,” Li Fei, a researcher at Xiamen University’s Taiwan Research Institute in China, told the Post.
From Beijing’s perspective, a meeting between Tsai and McCarthy means Taiwan’s president engaging with the third-highest ranking US government official and demonstrates Washington moving away from the one-China policy. The meeting will likely be less provocative in China’s eyes if it’s held in California as opposed to Washington.
Now China wants to control who visits the USA! Too bad. Free people are allowed to meet with whoever they want to.
Hopefully after 2024 she will travel to the US for a permanent stay. She is working to serve the interests of the neocons in the United States, not Taiwan.
This is of course not just a visit or a meeting. This is about US meddling with Taiwan. The 2024 elections need to be steered so that Taiwanese can be used as a proxy force against China. Until now it looks a counterproductive strategy for the US, since the Taiwanese people, not entirely eager to go to war against China to preserve US hegemony, opted to walk away from the DPP and cost Tsai Ing-wen the leadership of her own party, late 2022. So the time is short for the Taiwanese to become convinced that becoming cannon fodder for the Americans is in their best interest. That will require some bilateral coordination, so these “free people meetings” will be a recurring theme.
Ridicules argument. Taiwan people want to be free from China. And free people can meet with other free people at any time. Quit trying to blame China aggression on a free and independent island on the USA. Your desire to blame every problem in the world on the USA is boring.
The Taiwanese do not seem to find it ridiculous or even remotely funny to be used as cannon fodder in the war that the US desires to start against China. ASAP, but at the latest before end 2024. And consequently, they are voting accordingly.
Of course, if you have the misfortune to be part of the contingency of the cognitively destitute and are always fooled all of the time, you take it for tautological that “free people” want to do what the US wants them to do. So, problem if they don’t. And they didn’t. Therein lies the source of your annoyance with me, which I am afraid I cannot be bothered to reciprocate.
All in a day’s work in service to the hegemon’s relentless pursuit of warfare as the indispensable component of US foreign “policy”.