US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy emerged from a meeting Wednesday with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen stressing the importance of the relationship between the two sides to economic freedom, peace and stability in the region.
(Bloomberg) — US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy emerged from a meeting Wednesday with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen stressing the importance of the relationship between the two sides to economic freedom, peace and stability in the region.
Neither leader mentioned China in their joint public remarks, even as the meeting in Southern California provided a new challenge in the already fraught relations between Washington and Beijing.
“I believe our bond is stronger now than at any time or point in my lifetime,” McCarthy told reporters after the meeting, held at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV’s Balance of Power, McCarthy, a California Republican, reiterated that the US, in his view, had “never spoken with one voice when it comes to China.”
But he said the new House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party marks an effort toward toward bipartisan clarity in terms of US policy.
McCarthy also said of Communist Party’s criticism of his meeting with Tsai, “They can’t dictate who the speaker of the House can meet with.” McCarthy, who has traveled to Beijing three times, said he would “gladly” meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
He deflected when asked whether he would support US military action in the case of an invasion of Taiwan, saying “This is a hypothetical question we would never want to get to.”
He said earlier that the US must continue arms sales to Taiwan while also strengthening economic cooperation, particularly on trade and technology.
The speaker said at a press conference that he didn’t have any plans to travel to the island but didn’t rule it out. He added that he would only go there with a bipartisan delegation.
At the request of the Taiwanese government, McCarthy put off a promised trip, at least until after Taiwan’s presidential elections next January. He has acknowledged concerns over escalation, despite demands for an even more hawkish stance from some fellow Republicans.
Democrats, including Representative Pete Aguilar of California, attended the Wednesday meeting and flanked McCarthy at a press conference. Another Democrat, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, told reporters afterward that more needs to be done to ease a backlog in US weapons deliveries to the island.
It was the first time a Taiwanese president had met with a House speaker, the third-ranking figure in government, on American soil in the more than four decades since the US formulated its “one China” policy recognizing Beijing.
“It’s no secret” that peace and democracy “are facing unprecedented challenges,” Tsai said. “Taiwan is not isolated, we are not alone,” she said.
A Chinese aircraft carrier battle group on Wednesday entered Taiwan’s southeastern waters, according to the island’s Ministry of National Defense, an early — if mostly symbolic — sign of the “resolute measures” Beijing had pledged in response to the “provocation” presented by the encounter.
Separately, China’s large patrol and rescue vessel, the Haixun 06, led a formation of maritime enforcement ships in the north-central part of the Taiwan Strait, state broadcaster China Central Television reported. Taiwan also protested China’s plans for onboard inspections of cargo and passenger ships.
Read More: Taiwan Spots Chinese Aircraft Carrier Ahead of McCarthy Meeting
The Biden administration has tried to play down the visit as a routine “transit” by Tsai, who passed through New York at the start of a trip to allies Guatemala and Belize and is ending it with the stop in California.
There’s no reason for Beijing to react “in any kind of a harsh manner to this — or overreact at all — because there’s nothing atypical or uncommon about presidents of Taiwan transiting the United States, or in fact meeting with members of Congress,” John Kirby, spokesman for the US National Security Council, told reporters Wednesday.
When then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last summer, China staged an unprecedented array of military drills in response, including a simulated naval blockade and the firing of missiles over the democratically governed island that Beijing claims as part of its country.
All of Taiwan’s sitting presidents since the 1990s have traveled to the US on stopovers en route to other destinations. While most such “transits” passed without heightening tensions, a visit by leader Lee Teng-hui to speak at Cornell University in 1995 sparked the so-called Third Strait Crisis, with China firing missiles into waters near the main island of Taiwan and carrying out amphibious assault exercises.
Just as visits by Taiwanese leaders aren’t new, China’s anger over them isn’t either. In past years, China has said the stopovers in the US disguise Taiwanese leaders’ desire for independence from China. President Joe Biden has repeatedly said the US would defend Taiwan against a potential Chinese invasion, although his aides have just as often asserted there’s been no change in the past policy of “strategic ambiguity.”
Tsai said at a dinner banquet last week after landing in New York that the security of the world hinges on her self-ruled island’s fate. While in New York, she met privately on March 30 with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. She also had a breakfast meeting with Republican Senators Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Joni Ernst of Iowa and Democrat Mark Kelly of Arizona the following day before leaving the city, according to Chang Tun-han, deputy secretary general of Taiwan’s presidential office.
The Taiwan president’s departure from the US will be followed Thursday by the arrival in Taipei by a bipartisan delegation of US lawmakers led by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican.
–With assistance from Justin Sink, Jacob Gu and Billy House.
(Adds remarks on weapons backlog from US congressman. An earlier version of this story corrected the spelling of the Chinese leader’s name.)
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