China on Wednesday warned that it would respond if Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) while she visits the US as part of a trip to Central America.
Tsai departed for her trip to Guatemala and Belize, two countries that maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taipei. On the way there, Tsai will spend two days in New York, and on the way back, she will stop in Los Angeles on April 4 and 5, where she’s expected to meet with McCarthy.
Beijing views any official contact between Taiwan’s president and high-level US government officials as an affront to the one-China policy. In August 2022, China launched its largest-ever military exercises around Taiwan in response to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visiting the island.
Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said if Tsai “has contact with US House Speaker McCarthy, it will be another provocation that seriously violates the one-China principle, harms China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and destroys peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”
“We firmly oppose this and will definitely take measures to resolutely fight back,” Zhu added. Tsai has traveled to the US as president several times before, most recently in 2019. But tensions between the US and China over Taiwan have soared since then, and Beijing has been responding more harshly to official contacts between Washington and Taipei.
The White House said Wednesday that China shouldn’t take any action in response to Tsai’s trip, insisting it’s not an official visit. “It is Taiwan’s decision to make these transits based on their own travel, transits are not visits, they are private, and they are unofficial,” said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
Later in the day, Xu Xueyuan, chargé d’affaires at China’s embassy in Washington, rejected the White House’s position and warned a Tsai-McCarthy meeting could lead to a confrontation between the US and China. Xu said the US “should not use past mistakes as excuses for repeating them today.”
“[Whether] it is Taiwan leaders coming to the United States or the US leaders visiting Taiwan, it could lead to another serious, serious, serious, I repeat, confrontation in the China-US relationship,” Xu added.
Hmmmmm…… This seems to be getting slightly more delicate.
Everything is going according to their plan.
What may not be in their “plan” is China dumping a few hundred of millions of bonds and treasuries of the U.S.
that is the likely scenario
That is what I don’t understand. When u need and wants someone to help you (as far as U.S. bonds are concerned), why would u keep antagonizing them?! And what for?
That may very well be the most important part of the plan.
The US government is GOING to default on its debts sooner or later (and not for the first time).
Shifting blame for that default and its effects on the American public, away from the generations of politicians who borrowed and spent like drunken sailors to THOSE EVIL CHINESE, might keep the existing ruling class in power a little while longer.
Yes, I “transit” through LAX and just happen to meet with House speaker all the time too. Nothing to see here.
Seriously, what’s the point of these visits that can’t be done on a Zoom call? Nothing like riling up some more tensions and poke the China bear some more.
How is someone not from China visiting someone else not from China, in a country around the world from China, “poking the China bear?”
Kirby’s calling it (meeting with the Speaker) a “private visit” is transparently disingenuous. Specious semantical tricks by WH lawyers are the cold face of gangsterism, a verbal aggression.
Maybe not a poke, but definitely a spit, in the eye, which only a craven party could tolerate. Would you consider the WH should view a parallel “private” meeting with Wang Yi in Beijing with perfect equanimity?
Ah, but she is from China, so the rest of that “How” is subject to more than one interpretation 😉
Looks like we’re intent on “ratcheting up the tensions” again.
posturing
The BinLinken administration’s conduct is aimed squarely at emulation of ninth graders in a schoolyard, playing I double dare ya…