by foreign editors
Less than two weeks after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit, five US lawmakers meet with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Beijing: “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China”
A US Congressional delegation made a surprise arrival in Taiwan yesterday, less than two weeks after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Senator Ed Markey, with four alternates, is in Taipei for a two-day mission he already has with President Tsai and met some ministers. Chinese nationalist tabloid Global Times yesterday announced “military operations around the island, an inalienable part of China,” and today the Beijing army confirmed it had conducted “new drills.”
The new drills, the People’s Liberation Army said in a statement, should “provide a powerful deterrent for the United States and Taiwan not to continue their ugly political jokes that undermine peace and stability across the Straits.”
Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan had already led to days of China’s threatening exercises, including launching missiles on the island and in the Taiwan Strait. China has also sent fighter jets and military ships. China sees formal contacts between US politicians and the island government as support for its independence from Beijing, and while it claims to want to take control of Taiwan by peaceful means, the recent “saber-clash” underscores military intentions instead.
The five-member US Congress delegation will be led by Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and will meet with other government and private sector officials. Predictably, cross-strait tensions and investment in Taiwan’s important semiconductor industry will be discussed. Other members of the delegation include Republican Congressman Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, a delegate from American Samoa, as well as Democrats John Garamendi and Alan Lowenthal from California and Don Beyer from Virginia.
August 15, 2022 (Modification August 15, 2022 | 09:54)
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