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 nations 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 nations to economic freedom, peace and stability in the region.
Neither leader mentioned China in 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 point in my lifetime,” McCarthy said after the meeting, held at the Reagan Presidential Library in Southern California. Democratic Representative Pete Aguilar earlier gave welcoming remarks, reflecting the bipartisan gathering.
It’s the first time a Taiwanese president has met with a House speaker, the third-ranking figure in government, on US 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 with McCarthy and other lawmakers of both parties 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 by stopping in Southern 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.
The meeting at the Reagan library in Simi Valley also represented a concession by McCarthy. At the request of the Taiwanese government, the lawmaker put off a promised trip to Taiwan, at least until after its presidential elections next year. He has acknowledged concerns over escalation, despite demands for an even more hawkish stance from some of his fellow Republicans.
When then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last year, 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.”
“It’s the right of 23 million Taiwanese to have exchanges with democratic countries,” Taiwanese Presidential Office spokeswoman Lin Yu-chan said in a statement Monday. “There is no room for China to comment.”
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 City, she met privately on March 30 with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. She also had a breakfast meeting with Republican Senators Dan Sullivan and Joni Ernst and Democratic Senator Mark Kelly 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 Mike McCaul. Although such lower-level visits haven’t previously stirred strong protests from Beijing, the Chinese embassy in Washington warned members of the group that it considers the delegation’s plans a serious violation of the US’s “one-China policy.”
–With assistance from Justin Sink and Jacob Gu.
(Updates with McCarthy comments in third paragraph)
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