Media reports say U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet with President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan during her scheduled visit to the United States in the coming weeks.
President Tsai will arrive in California in April and will give a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Center near Los Angeles ahead of her scheduled trip to Central America. The reports did not say if McCarthy, who represents a district in California, will meet with Tsai at the Reagan Library.
McCarthy had expressed an interest in visiting Taiwan if House Republicans took control of the chamber and he was named speaker, which happened in January in the wake of last November’s congressional elections. But Taiwanese officials reportedly expressed concerns that a potential visit would further aggravate tensions with China, which considers the self-ruled island a breakaway province and believes official visits from foreign dignitaries is a move by Taipei to assert independence.
Beijing responded to a visit to Taiwan last August by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by launching several days of massive military drills over the Taiwan Strait, including firing ballistic missiles in the waterway that separates the island from mainland China.
Taiwan has been self-governing since the end of China’s civil war in 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces were driven off the mainland by Mao Zedong’s Communists and fled to the island. China has vowed to bring Taiwan under its control by any means necessary, including a military invasion.
The United States ended official relations with Taiwan in 1979 when it switched diplomatic recognition to China. But the U.S. has maintained unofficial relations with Taiwan and supplies it with defensive weapons as mandated by the U.S. Congress.
Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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