House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in Southern California on Wednesday, promising unwavering support for Taiwan and praising bipartisan cooperation on China amid worsening Beijing-Washington tensions.
The meeting took place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library despite threats of retaliation from China, which views the exchange as a show of support for Taiwan’s independence.
“I believe our bond is stronger now than at any time or point in my lifetime and of course, President Tsai is a great champion of that bond,” McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters after the meeting.
Tsai said it was fitting the two leaders came together at the Simi Valley library honoring Reagan, whose administration was instrumental in securing assurances between the U.S. and Taiwan in 1982.
That continued support assures “the people of Taiwan that we are not isolated and we are not alone,” Tsai said, but she added that democracy in Taiwan is once again under threat.
“We once again find ourselves in a world where democracy is under threat, and the urgency of keeping the beacon of freedom shining cannot be understated,” she said.
Tsai’s visit to California, her second transit stop in the U.S. after she spent 48 hours in New York last week, follows a trip to Guatemala and Belize, two of Taiwan’s few remaining formal diplomatic allies.
Asked whether he would visit Taiwan, McCarthy said he didn’t have plans, “but that doesn’t mean I will not go.”
Joining McCarthy in the meeting was a bipartisan group of more than a dozen lawmakers, including Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., who is a member of House Democratic leadership, and the top Republican and top Democrat on the House’s new China select committee.
McCarthy praised the bipartisanship approach to Taiwan and China, crediting Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top Democrat in the House, who met with Tsai last month in New York, and other Democrats for their work on the China committee.
The friendship between America and the people of Taiwan has never been stronger. It is my honor to welcome President @iingwen to the @Reagan_Library. pic.twitter.com/2XSIJRv7Vp
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) April 5, 2023
Chinese officials have criticized the 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.
Outside the library Wednesday, more than 100 people gathered in dueling protests between supporters of Taiwan and of China. A plane circled overhead carrying a sign that read “Taiwan is a part of China.”
Earlier Wednesday, the Maritime Safety Administration of Fujian province, 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 and that two of the planes entered Taiwan’s self-declared Air Defense Identification Zone in what is a near-daily occurrence.
Before she left Belize for the U.S. on Tuesday, Tsai held a videoconference with security officials in Taiwan to discuss the regional situation, her office said. A spokesperson for Tsai said this week that 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.
“Beijing should not use the transits as an excuse to take any actions to ratchet up tensions, to further push at changing the status quo,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.
Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning contended: “Repeating a mistake does not make it legitimate. 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 is a win for China, he said, because McCarthy is not following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., by traveling to Taiwan — at least for now. China responded to Pelosi’s visit in August, the first by a sitting House speaker in 25 years, with unprecedented live-fire military drills. In a statement Wednesday, Pelosi commended the McCarthy-Tsai meeting for “its leadership” and “bipartisan participation.”
Taiwan, which lawmakers from the U.S. and elsewhere visit regularly, 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.”
Any immediate reaction from China could be constrained as the Tsai-McCarthy meeting took place on the same day French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Beijing for a three-day state visit. He is joined by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on a trip that is meant to show China a united European front on issues like trade and the war in Ukraine.
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 is scheduled to return to Taiwan on Friday.
