China threatened on Wednesday that it would be a “provocation” if House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen when he passed through the United States next week.
Speaking hours later as she left Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory, Tsai said outside pressure would not prevent her government from engaging with the world.
Tsai’s visit is fueled by Beijing’s newly established diplomatic ties with Honduras and a historic visit by Tsai’s predecessor to China. The dueling visits underscore Taiwan’s increasingly fragile situation, as well as rising tensions between the US and China, with experts telling NBC News Beijing, may respond to Tsai’s US visit more aggressively than in the past. Is.
In remarks at an airport outside Taipei before her departure, Tsai said, “We are calm and confident, will neither bow down nor provoke.”
“Taiwan will walk firmly on the path of freedom and democracy and go out into the world,” he said. “Although the road ahead is difficult and steep, we are not alone.”
Tsai will first stop in New York on Wednesday en route to Guatemala and Belize, then make another stop in Los Angeles before returning to Taiwan on April 7. In Los Angeles, she may meet in person with McCarthy and other members of Congress. Although it has not been officially confirmed.
A spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office objected to any such meeting, which Beijing would see as an expression of support for Taiwan’s independence.
“If she contacts US House Speaker McCarthy, it will be a further provocation that seriously violates the one-China principle, undermines China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and undermines peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.” weakens,” spokesman Zhu Fenglian said at a regular news briefing on Wednesday.
“We strongly oppose this and will take steps to fight back strongly,” he said.
When Nancy Pelosi, McCarthy’s predecessor, visited Taiwan last August, China responded with unprecedented live-fire military exercises besieging the island. Taiwan said this week there was no sign of any change in China’s usual military deployment in the region, which includes sending warplanes to the island almost every day.
The US says visits by high-level Taiwanese officials, including Tsai, are routine and in line with a long-standing US policy of recognizing Beijing as the sole legal government of China while maintaining informal ties with Taipei.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters last week, Tsai’s US visit should not be used by China as “a pretext to escalate any aggressive activity around the Taiwan Strait”, noting that Tsai in 2016 Has passed through America six times since taking office. With minimal response from Beijing.
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that China has lodged a complaint with the US over its transit plans.
“The mistakes of the past cannot justify the mistakes of today,” spokesman Mao Ning said at a regular news briefing.
US-China relations have become more complicated since 2019 when Tsai last visited the US, said Lev Nachman, a political scientist and assistant professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
He said, ‘Things which used to be very small earlier have become very big now. “Even though this is a completely long-standing practice, I expect the PRC to have a somewhat exaggerated response that normally wouldn’t be a big deal,” he said, referring to an acronym To the People’s Republic of China.
Duel Tours and Diplomatic Shifts
Taiwan’s status is one of the most sensitive issues in US-China relations, which were already at their lowest point in decades after Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month detected and shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon. A planned visit to Beijing was postponed. over US territory. President Joe Biden says he hopes to speak by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping soon.
Ma Ying-jeou, Tsai’s predecessor, has been in China since Monday, the first visiting former or current Taiwanese president since the Republic of China government fled the island in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communist forces.
His opposition Kuomintang party favors closer ties with China, which says it seeks peaceful reunification with Taiwan but has not ruled out the use of force.
“People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are Chinese people” and share the same ancestors, Ma said in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing on Tuesday, using an expression that refers to Chinese people in terms of ethnicity rather than nationality. Is.
“We sincerely hope that both sides of the Taiwan Strait will work together to pursue peace, avoid war, and strive to revive China,” he said in remarks released by his office.
Opinion polls show that the majority of people in Taiwan oppose integration with China and do not identify as Chinese.
Ma says the purpose of his 12-day visit, which is unofficial, is to make offerings to his ancestors, as well as promote cross-strait student exchanges.
Taiwan’s governing Democratic Progressive Party criticized the visit as unfair because Ma arrived in China the day after Honduras established diplomatic ties with Beijing, severing its ties with Taipei in the process. The decision leaves Taiwan with just 13 formal diplomatic allies, including Guatemala and Belize.
It has raised the stakes for Tsai’s visit to the two countries, her first diplomatic trip before the pandemic.
But Honduras’ switch has been met with dismay in Taiwan, Nachman said, adding that the island’s geopolitical security is more dependent on its partnership with the US, the European Union, Japan, and other international backers, with which it has no formal ties.
He also said that Ma, who left office in 2016 with an “extremely low” approval rating and is no longer a leading party figure, was not expected to visit Beijing or meet with any high-profile officials.
Nachman said that, while the optics of the dueling visits are “worthwhile”, Ma’s visit to China “is not going to drastically change the direction of Taiwan’s politics.”
Tsai’s transit through the US is more important, said Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China and Asia-Pacific studies at Cornell University, and Beijing will take note of what she is saying there.
While Tsai is widely regarded as pragmatic and measured in her public remarks, stressing her commitment to maintaining the status quo, US lawmakers who may meet her may be more unpredictable.
“American leaders feel they need to talk tough to signal their commitment and resolve, and that is the way to contain China,” Weiss said.
The danger, he said, is that some hard-hitting talk – such as referring to Taiwan as an independent country or claiming that China has a deadline for an invasion – could provoke Beijing to act too soon and “Maybe doing too much windowing.” The opportunity we’re trying to prevent.
Weiss said it is important for the US to continue supporting Taiwan’s self-defense as well as strengthen its military presence in the Asia-Pacific.
“But that work can be done steadily, quietly, without the rhetoric that we increasingly hear from representatives on Capitol Hill,” she said.