Lindsay Wise and Joyu Wang
A bipartisan group of senators quietly met with Taiwan’s president in New York last week, expressing support for the island’s democracy and touting legislation that would impose stiff economic and financial sanctions against China if it invaded Taiwan.
The meeting with Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona was disclosed just as Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and the Biden administration are heading into the most pivotal event in her closely watched travels through the U.S.
Ms. Tsai plans to meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) on Wednesday, which Beijing has warned would lead to unspecified retaliation, testing the ability of the U.S. and China to manage tensions.
“There’s this pressure, let’s face it, that’s being put on—a full-court press” by the Chinese Communist Party, Mr. Sullivan said in an interview. “When you have a leader of this important democracy come to your own country, it’s more important than ever to make sure that dictators in Beijing don’t dictate who we can or cannot meet with, especially on American soil.”
Ms. Tsai is set to land in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening for the second of two multiday stopovers in the U.S. on her way to and from visiting Taiwan’s diplomatic partners in Central America. At the top of her agenda in California is a long-anticipated meeting with Mr. McCarthy in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Wednesday.
Visits to the U.S. by Taiwanese leaders are labeled as “transits” and considered unofficial, part of Washington’s delicate diplomatic dance with Beijing, which considers Taiwan a part of Chinese territory. As a result, Taiwanese leaders avoid stops in Washington and typically don’t meet with senior U.S. officials.
The White House has repeatedly characterized Ms. Tsai’s U.S. stops, sandwiched around visits to Guatemala and Belize, as being no different than previous transits.
“It’s private, and it’s unofficial,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday. “There should be no reason for China to overreact here.”
The senators’ meeting with Ms. Tsai took place Friday morning at the Lotte New York Palace hotel and lasted about an hour. All three senators are military veterans, and members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Ms. Tsai previously had met with Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Ernst multiple times, but this was the first time she met Mr. Kelly.
Ms. Tsai also met last week in New York with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), an event first reported by Punchbowl News, a Capitol Hill newsletter.
Mr. Sullivan said he talked to Ms. Tsai about the Stand With Taiwan Act, a sanctions bill he reintroduced last week with Rep. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.). The bill would mandate sanctions on Chinese Communist Party members, Chinese financial institutions and industry no later than three days after a U.S. administration determined that China invaded Taiwan. It also would bar U.S. businesses from making investments in CCP-affiliated entities and ban imports of certain products mined or made in China, from raw minerals and textiles to pharmaceuticals.
“There’s a lot of growing bipartisan interest in this kind of level of deterrence,” Mr. Sullivan said. He said one of the lessons of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that to be an effective deterrent, sanctions should be laid out before any invasion rather than afterward.
Ms. Ernst said after meeting with Ms. Tsai that she is more resolved that America’s partnership with Taiwan be strengthened through trade, enhanced military training and swift weapons transfers.
Kevin McCarthy would become the highest-level U.S. official to meet a Taiwanese leader on American soil since the practice of transit visits began.PHOTO: AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG NEWSMr. Kelly said they discussed shared security and economic priorities, including a $40 billion semiconductor campus that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is building in north Phoenix. The project is a showpiece in the Biden administration’s plan to bring chip production back to the U.S.
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the U.S. said: “During transits through the U.S., the president engages with American friends, in line with past precedents.” The office said it did “not have any further comments to share on the specifics of any meetings.”
If Mr. McCarthy’s meeting goes ahead as planned Wednesday, the Republican House speaker would become the highest-level U.S. official to meet a Taiwanese leader on American soil since the practice of transit visits began.
Such a meeting would “be an assault on the political foundation of Sino-U.S. relations,” a spokesperson for the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles said Monday. “This is the first red line that must not be crossed.”
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the Chinese criticisms “have become increasingly absurd” and that it wouldn’t back down in the face of authoritarian pressure.
Taipei’s increasingly close relationship with Washington has been a growing source of anxiety in Beijing, turning the self-ruled island into the most volatile flashpoint in relations between the world’s two largest economies. China’s Communist Party, which has never ruled Taiwan, nevertheless vows it will one day take control there, by force if necessary. Beijing is expanding and upgrading its military with that possibility in mind, spurring similar moves in Taiwan and the U.S.
With tensions running high, Ms. Tsai’s office and the Biden administration have taken pains to keep the Taiwanese leader largely out of the public eye during her U.S. stopovers.
During an earlier stop in New York, Ms. Tsai made a brief appearance at an out-of-the-way cafe in Brooklyn, where she declined to be interviewed, before accepting an award from the conservative think tank Hudson Institute in a closed-door event.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, in Simi Valley, Calif., where the U.S. House speaker plans to meet with Taiwan’s president.PHOTO: DAVID CRANE/ASSOCIATED PRESSAfter Mr. McCarthy’s predecessor as House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, traveled to Taiwan last summer—the highest-ranking U.S. official to do so in a quarter-century—Beijing encircled the island with rocket and ballistic-missile fire and tested its defenses with navy ships and war planes. It was an unusual show of force that sparked new concerns inside the U.S. military about China’s ability to blockade Taiwan.
That episode sent relations between Washington and Beijing into a downward spiral that both capitals have attempted to reverse, with limited success.
Mr. McCarthy expressed interest in visiting Taiwan himself after being named speaker, but the prospect of a repeat of Mrs. Pelosi’s trip, and of Beijing’s wargames, unnerved some in Taipei. After considering the risks, members of Ms. Tsai’s decision-making circle worked to persuade Mr. McCarthy to meet with Ms. Tsai in the U.S. instead, according to people familiar with the discussions.
A government official familiar with the discussions attributed the outcome to a high degree of trust between Taipei and Washington.
“It’s an amazing diplomatic move by whoever in the U.S. and Taiwan was able to make that happen,” Lev Nachman, a political scientist who teaches at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, said of Taipei’s persuading Mr. McCarthy to meet in the U.S.
Giving Beijing an excuse to repeat its live-fire drills would have been politically damaging to Ms. Tsai’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which was battered in local elections late last year and is trying to shore up support ahead of presidential elections in January, Mr. Nachman said.
Chinese military analyst Fu Qianshao told China’s nationalistic tabloid Global Times over the weekend that he expected the Chinese military’s response to a McCarthy meeting to be similar to the one it unleashed following Mrs. Pelosi’s Taiwan visit.
Taiwanese military and defense officials have said that they don’t expect China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, to react forcefully but that the island is prepared for that possibility.
No comments:
Post a Comment