Speaker Pelosi’s plans to visit Taiwan angers China
DHARAMSALA, 20 July: The Speaker of the US House of Representatives may become the highest-level delegation from the US to visit Taiwan in 25 years as she plans to visit the island next month.
The US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “plans to visit Taiwan next month to show support for Taipei as it comes under mounting pressure from China, in what would be the first trip by a Speaker of the US House of Representatives to the country in 25 years,” the Financial Times reported.
According to the report, six people familiar with the situation have stated that Pelosi would take a delegation to Taiwan in August.
The octogenarian Speaker had to cancel her visit to the island in April earlier this year after she caught Covid-19.
If she visits the island next month, it would make her the most senior US lawmaker to visit the island since one of her predecessors, Speaker Newt Gingrich’s visited in 1997.
The development came at a time when is at a record low and it has infuriated Beijing. China has warned of “resolute and forceful measures”.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson lashed out at the potential visit at a news conference on Tuesday that it has a “severe negative impact on the political foundation of China-US relations, and send a gravely wrong signal to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”
“If the US insists on going down the wrong path, China will definitely take resolute and forceful measures to firmly defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Zhao Lijian has said.
The spokesperson has concluded by declaring that the “US must be fully responsible for all the consequences caused by this.”
Beijing claims self-ruled and democratic Taiwan as its own and views it as a wayward province to be reunified with China by force if necessary.
Taiwan has been self-governed since 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang troops fled to the island after losing China’s civil war to Mao’s Communist Party.
