Comment on this story
comment
The Biden administration is preparing for China in response to the much-anticipated meeting next week in California between Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R), who will be the senior US official who will meet will bash a Taiwanese leader on American soil.
China’s response could be harsh objections or sanctions against McCarthy and other US officials. It could even be a display of military force equal to or surpassing the dramatic demonstration when rockets were fired over Taiwan following the visit of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosis in August.
US intelligence has assessed that Beijing is likely to view Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy (R-Calif.) as less provocative than her meeting in Taipei with Pelosi (D-Calif.) and will refrain from extreme aggression, a senior government official said , like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. But the reality is that government officials don’t know how Beijing will react to Tsai’s tour of the United States. This uncertainty, experts say, underscores the volatility of the situation.
“The Chinese will make their own decisions at the end of the day,” the senior official said.
Ahead of McCarthy’s meeting with Tsai, US service members in the Indo-Pacific region are working under heightened vigilance, officials said, monitoring wiretapping and other information and relaying that information to senior leaders.
Tsai crosses the United States on her way to meetings in Central America. She arrived in New York on Wednesday, where she was scheduled to speak at a private event Thursday night hosted by the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. On April 5, she will stop in California on her way back to Taiwan, where she is scheduled to meet McCarthy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
The White House and State Department have urged Beijing to view next week’s meeting as they do: a big step from McCarthy’s original plan to visit Taipei that poses no threat to China and does not mean a change in US policy.
“This transit is consistent with our long unofficial relationship with Taiwan and with the United States’ one-China policy,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday, referring to Washington’s long-held position that Beijing’s Claims neither disputed nor supported about the island. China considers Taiwan part of its territory, and Beijing has threatened to take it back by force if necessary.
“There’s no reason for that [China] reacting harshly or overreacting in any way,” Kirby added. “It’s a common occurrence. President Tsai Ing-wen has done so six times. Other Taiwan presidents have crossed the United States. There’s nothing unusual about that.”
The US says the Taiwanese president is in transit. China is not amused.
Unusually, however, the McCarthy-Tsai meeting on US soil will take place amid a hotly contested presidential election in Taipei and heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington, less than a year after Pelosi went to Taiwan against the wishes of a senior Biden administration officials had traveled.
In response to this visit, China launched a retaliatory military demonstration: firing ballistic missiles over Taiwan, sending warships into the Taiwan Strait and conducting a simulated blockade of the island. The fact that no speaker of the House of Representatives – a position second only to the presidency – has ever met with a Taiwanese president in the United States has angered Chinese officials.
“We firmly oppose this and will take firm countermeasures,” Zhu Fenglian, a spokesman for the Chinese government, told reporters on Wednesday.
A meeting between McCarthy and Tsai “seriously violates the one China principle [and] undermines China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said Zhu, who demanded that no US officials meet Tsai and that the United States “should refrain from arranging Tsai Ing-wen’s transit visits.”
Chinese embassy chargé d’affaires in Washington Xu Xueyuan was more explicit, calling Tsai’s transit “merely a disguise for her real intent to break through and advocate ‘Taiwan independence.’ “It made no difference whether Taiwanese leaders “came to the United States or US leaders visited Taiwan,” she said. “It could lead to another serious confrontation in China-US relations.”
McCarthy had expressed a desire to visit Taipei, but his office was told that such a visit ahead of January’s presidential election in Taiwan could be misused for political ends. The opposition Nationalist Party, his aides were told, could use a trip to portray the cross-strait policies of Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party as dangerous, unnecessarily provocative and a risk of war with China.
McCarthy has invited a delegation of lawmakers to accompany him next week, including members of the House of Representatives’ newly formed China Select Committee. However, some Democrats on the committee do not plan to attend the event, fearing it will be viewed as a “chest exercise” against Beijing, officials familiar with the matter said. Other lawmakers said their boss was unavailable to attend the California event.
McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The United States’ “One China Policy” recognizes that the People’s Republic of China is the sole legitimate government of China. Washington claims that Taiwan’s status should be settled peacefully between Beijing and Taipei, without the United States taking a stand. Still, the United States has provided billions of dollars in military equipment to Taiwan over the years under the Taiwan Relations Act to help it strengthen its defenses.
Xi Jinping, who has secured an unprecedented third term as China’s president and consolidated power in the government, has accused the United States of leading a campaign to contain, encircle and suppress China.
These are dangerous times, said Dennis Wilder, who has held top positions in Asia in the George W. Bush White House and in the CIA under President Barack Obama. “We are at the lowest point since the 1989 Tiananmen crisis,” he said, referring to Beijing’s crackdown on student protesters that led to the cancellation of US arms sales to China. Today, China’s military is more powerful than it was a decade ago and is vying with the United States for supremacy in the Indo-Pacific region. No wonder, he said, that the administration is in suspense.
“Sometimes they just don’t know how China would react,” Wilder said. “But there’s also a kind of fear that there might be a reaction. That’s the thing – it’s a new day with Xi Jinping. And therefore the reaction of the Chinese side is unpredictable.”
At the House of Representatives hearing on the Chinese Communist Party, both parties expressed their concerns
In a sign of the Biden administration’s concerns about China’s response, national security adviser Jake Sullivan held a call with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, on Friday to reiterate the idea that the trip was routine and should not provoke an overreaction — news that were repeated in two conversations with US media in the run-up to Tsai’s trip.
Sullivan also reiterated President Biden’s desire to hold a phone call with Xi to re-establish engagement following the November meeting between the two leaders in Bali. The call to Wang has not changed Beijing’s stance or led it to tone down its statements about Tsai’s trip.
The last time the US Indo-Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Operations Center or JIOC operated under Increased vigilance is warranted during Pelosi’s visit to Taipei, command spokesman Navy Capt. Kyle Raines said. That meant ensuring personnel at the station were paying close attention to events in Taiwan — following leads to hostile activity and meeting increased demands for information that might come from commanders on the ground, embassies in the region and the Pentagon, he said.
When Indo-Pacific Command officials learned that Tsai might travel to the United States, they made a similar plan. “We’re always prepared,” he said. “We adapt where necessary.”
US officials say Tsai’s transit through the United States follows similar visits by her and her predecessors. Tsai’s previous visits have included meetings with members of Congress.
When Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui traveled to New York to address his alma mater, Cornell University, in 1995, China was conducting months of military exercises, including conducting missile tests toward Taiwan.
On her current trip, in accordance with previous protocol, Tsai will be received by Laura Rosenberger, a former National Security Council official who is now chair of the American Institute in Taiwan, the US entity that handles relations with the island.
US officials say they do not support Taiwan’s independence, but Beijing sees deepening contact between the United States and Taiwanese officials as a precursor to such moves. When Pelosi visited Taipei last year, it was the highest-level trip since House Speaker Newt Gingrich visited in 1997.
Tsai’s transit comes as US officials sound varying degrees of alarm over China’s determination to take control of Taiwan by 2027, by force if necessary.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday that he does not see an attack on the island as imminent or inevitable, but that the Pentagon is working to provide Taiwan with weapons such as coastal defenses and anti-tank missiles and training for them, to deter an invasion.
“We’re making progress, but we’re going to move faster,” Austin said. “Not a week goes by that I don’t speak to commanders and staff about the issue…and the challenges we face with China.”
The McCarthy meeting could set back US-China relations in other ways as well.
After Pelosi’s visit, China restricted military-to-military communications with the United States and suspended climate talks. Some talks between China’s top climate envoy and US climate chief John F. Kerry have resumed, but they are yet to yield results. US officials remain concerned about the lack of contact between the two countries’ respective militaries — especially given the prospect of an air or sea casualty leading to a military escalation.
Before boarding her plane, Tsai told reporters, “I want to say to the whole world that democratic Taiwan will resolutely uphold the values of freedom and democracy and continue to be a force for good in the world.
“External pressure will not hamper our determination to engage with the world,” she said.
John Wagner contributed to this report.