New York: China has threatened retaliation if Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen meets with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during her visit, and the US has warned Beijing not to overreact. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen arrived in New York on Wednesday.
Tsai is travelling to Central America and making a stopover in the US. There, she will meet with the presidents of Guatemala and Belize to strengthen ties with those nations' governments. She will make a stop in California en route back to Taiwan, where McCarthy had promised to meet her.
According to the "One China" principle, no country may maintain official ties with both Beijing and Taipei. China claims the democratic island as a piece of its territory that will one day be retaken.
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Beijing declared on Wednesday that it would take "resolute measures to fight back" if Tsai and McCarthy did meet, stating that it was adamantly opposed to any such meeting.
In response, the US stated that China shouldn't use Tsai's stopover as an excuse to engage in aggressive behaviour in the Taiwan Strait.
Tsai was spotted entering her hotel in New York, where dozens of pro-Beijing protesters gathered raucously and waved the Chinese red flag. Nearby, a similar sized crowd of supporters of Taiwan cheered and waved their banner as well as the US stars and stripes.
The charge d'affaires at the Chinese embassy in Washington, Xu Xueyuan, claimed that she had repeatedly warned US officials that Tsai's trip would be against China's fundamental interests.
She told reporters, "We urge the US side not to repeat playing with fire on the Taiwan question," making reference, among other things, to the trip to Taiwan made by Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker at the time, last year.
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Tsai's trip comes after Honduras decided to establish diplomatic ties with Beijing earlier this month, leaving just 13 nations with formal relations with Taipei, including Belize and Guatemala.
Tsai will meet her counterparts from Guatemala and Belize in their respective nations after first travelling to New York, according to her office.
Then, on her way home, she will make a stop in Los Angeles. Although Taiwanese authorities have not yet confirmed the talks, McCarthy has said he will meet Tsai in his home state.
Beijing was incensed by Pelosi's visit, and as a result, the Chinese military conducted massive drills all around the island.
As Beijing has increased its pressure on Taiwan since Tsai took office in 2016, poaching nine of its diplomatic allies, analysts say the US stopover comes at a crucial time.
According to James Lee, an Academia Sinica researcher who studies US-Taiwan relations, Beijing's efforts to woo Taiwan's diplomatic allies will result in Taiwan's ties with the US becoming stronger. Despite shifting its diplomatic recognition to Beijing in 1979, the United States continues to be Taiwan's most crucial ally and its largest arms supplier.
The strengthening of Taiwan's unofficial ties will more than make up for the loss of official ties with other nations, according to Lee. Beijing chastised recent visits by a Czech delegation and a German minister.
The first visit to China by a former Taiwanese president, ex-president Ma Ying-jeou, is one of Tsai's most prominent domestic rivals. Since the two sides' civil war-induced split in 1949, China has increased its investment in Latin America, a key diplomatic flashpoint between Taipei and Beijing.
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After Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Reina and his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang formally established diplomatic relations in Beijing on Sunday, Taiwan accused China of using "coercion and intimidation" to entice away its allies. According to Reina, Honduras, one of the region's poorest nations, made the switch out of necessity for its economy.
The action carried on a pattern in Latin America that had seen Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, and the Dominican Republic all recently change their diplomatic recognition from Washington to Beijing. Taiwan still maintains diplomatic ties with a small number of nations in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Paraguay and Haiti, in addition to Guatemala and Belize.