China has threatened “resolute countermeasures” over a planned meeting between Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen and the US House speaker Kevin McCarthy during an upcoming visit to America by the head of the self-governing island democracy.
Diplomatic pressure against Taiwan has ramped up recently, with Beijing poaching Taipei’s dwindling number of diplomatic allies while also sending military fighter jets flying towards the island on a near daily basis.
Earlier this month, Honduras established diplomatic relations with China, leaving Taiwan with 13 countries that recognise it as a sovereign state.
Ms Tsai framed the trip as a chance to show Taiwan’s commitment to democratic values on the world stage, as she left Taiwan on Wednesday to begin her 10-day tour of the Americas.
“I want to tell the whole world, democratic Taiwan will resolutely safeguard the values of freedom and democracy, and will continue to be a force for good in the world, continuing a cycle of goodness, strengthening the resilience of democracy in the world,” she told reporters.
“External pressure will not obstruct our resolution to engage with the world.”
Ms Tsai is scheduled to transit through New York on March 30 before heading to Guatemala and Belize.
On April 5, she is expected to stop in Los Angeles on her way back to Taiwan, at which time the meeting with Mr McCarthy is tentatively scheduled.
The US stops are the most closely watched of her trip.
Spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Zhu Fenglian denounced Ms Tsai’s stopover on her way to visit diplomatic allies in Central America and demanded that no US officials met with her.
“We firmly oppose this and will take resolute countermeasures,” Ms Zhu said.
The US should “refrain from arranging Tsai Ing-wen’s transit visits and even contact with American officials, and take concrete actions to fulfil its solemn commitment not to support Taiwan independence”, she said.
Transit visits through the US during broader international travel by the Taiwanese president have been routine over the years, senior US officials in Washington and Beijing have underscored to their Chinese counterparts.
In such unofficial visits in recent years, Ms Tsai has met with members of Congress and the Taiwanese diaspora and has been welcomed by the chairperson of the American Institute in Taiwan, the US government-run not-for-profit organisation that carries out unofficial relations with Taiwan.
But the planned meeting with Mr McCarthy has triggered fears of a heavy-handed Chinese reaction amid heightened frictions between Beijing and Washington over US support for Taiwan, trade and human rights issues.
Following a visit by then-house speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in 2022, Beijing launched missiles over the area, deployed warships across the median line of the Taiwan Strait and carried out military exercises in a simulated blockade of the island. Beijing also suspended climate talks with the US and restricted military-to-military communication with the Pentagon.
Mr McCarthy has said he would meet with Ms Tsai when she was in the US and had not ruled out the possibility of traveling to Taiwan in a show of support.
Beijing sees official American contact with Taiwan as encouragement to make the island’s decades-old de facto independence permanent, a step US leaders say they do not support.
