US: No reason for China to react to Taiwan leader stopover
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is putting out the word that planned stopovers in the United States by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in the coming weeks fall in line with recent precedent and should not be used as a pretext by China to step up aggressive activity in the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan’s office of the president confirmed on Tuesday that Tsai is tentatively scheduled to transit through New York on March 30 before heading to Guatemala and Belize. She’s expected to stop in Los Angeles on April 5 on her way back to Taiwan. The office did not provide details of her itinerary while in the U.S.
Ahead of Taiwan’s announcement, senior U.S. officials in Washington and Beijing have underscored to their Chinese counterparts in recent weeks that transit visits through the United States during broader international travel by the Taiwanese president have been routine over the years, according to a senior administration official. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
In such unofficial visits in recent years, 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 U.S. government-run nonprofit that carries out unofficial relations with Taiwan. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the planned stopovers—administration officials stress they are not official visits—are “business as usual” and consistent with longstanding U.S. policy.
“There’s no reason for China to overreact,” Kirby said about the expected unofficial visit. “Heck, there’s no reason for China to react.”
Tsai transited through the United States six times between 2016 and 2019 before slowing international travel with the coronavirus pandemic. In reaction to those visits, China rhetorically lashed out against the U.S. and Taiwan.
State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said “the unofficial nature of our relations with Taiwan remains unchanged.”
The Biden administration is trying to avoid a replay of the heavy-handed response by China that came after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last year.
Following Pelosi’s August visit, Beijing launched missiles over Taiwan, deployed warships across the median line of the Taiwan Strait and carried out military exercises near the island. Beijing also suspended climate talks with the U.S. and restricted military-to-military communication with the Pentagon.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, has said he would meet with Tsai when she is in the U.S. and has 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 U.S. leaders say they don’t support. Pelosi, D-Calif., was the highest-ranking elected American official to visit the island since Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997. Under the “one China” policy, the U.S. recognizes Beijing as the government of China and doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Taiwan but has maintained that Taipei is an important partner in the Indo-Pacific.