House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen are set to meet in California on Wednesday despite threats of retaliation from China, which views the exchange as a show of support for Taiwan’s independence.
The meeting at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library will take place as Tsai transits through the United States after a trip to Guatemala and Belize, and comes amid worsening Beijing-Washington tensions.
Tsai will meet with McCarthy, as well as a bipartisan group of more than a dozen lawmakers, including the top Republican and top Democrat on the House’s new China select committee.
Chinese officials have criticized the planned meeting as a “provocation” and a violation of the one-China principle, under which Washington recognizes Beijing as the sole legitimate government of China while maintaining unofficial relations with Taipei.
China’s ruling Communist Party claims sovereignty over Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy, despite never having controlled it. Ahead of the Tsai-McCarthy meeting, China said it would “resolutely defend” its territorial integrity.
On Wednesday, the Maritime Safety Administration of Fujian province, which sits about 100 miles across the water from Taiwan, said on its official WeChat account that it had begun a joint cruise and patrol operation in the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan also said Wednesday that it had detected 14 Chinese military planes and three Chinese military vessels near the island, two of the planes entering Taiwan’s self-declared Air Defense Identification Zone in what is a near-daily occurrence.
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Before leaving Belize for the U.S. on Tuesday, Tsai held a video conference with security officials in Taiwan to discuss the regional situation, her office said. Earlier this week, a spokesperson for Tsai said it was “the right of the 23 million Taiwanese people to have exchanges with democratic countries.”
“There is no room for China to comment,” the spokesperson added.
The White House says that visits by high-level Taiwanese officials are routine and that China should not use Tsai’s travel through the U.S. as a “pretext” for greater aggression against Taiwan.
“Repeating a mistake does not make it legitimate,” contended Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning. “The issue is not about China overreacting, but the U.S. egregiously conniving at and supporting ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists.”
The Tsai-McCarthy meeting is “actually a win-win-win” for China, Taiwan and the U.S., said Lev Nachman, a political scientist and assistant professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
It’s a win for China, he said, because McCarthy is not following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, by traveling to Taiwan — though he has not ruled out a visit in the future. China responded to Pelosi’s visit last August, the first by a sitting House speaker in 25 years, with unprecedented live-fire military drills.
Taiwan, which is regularly visited by lawmakers from the U.S. and elsewhere, is seen as having successfully postponed a trip by McCarthy, who “listened and actually was able to respect what Taiwan thought was best for itself right now,” Nachman said.
But the U.S. also benefits, he said, “because McCarthy still gets to say that he met with the Taiwanese president.”
As Tsai arrived at her hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday night, she was greeted by supporters waving Taiwanese flags and photos of her, as well as a smaller group of pro-China demonstrators.
Former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, whose opposition party favors closer ties with Beijing, is also still in China on a historic 12-day visit. Chinese aggression in response to the Tsai-McCarthy meeting could erode support for Ma’s party, the Kuomintang, ahead of a presidential election in Taiwan early next year.
Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy comes after a stop in New York, where she met with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House, as well as a bipartisan group of members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Tsai is scheduled to return to Taiwan on Friday.
Courtney Kube and Kyle Stewart contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
