(Washington) US President Joe Biden said the US military considers the Crown Prince’s visit to Taiwan, which angers Beijing as much as it embarrasses the government, “not a good idea.”
Posted yesterday at 10:26 AM.
Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the House of Representatives, and as such one of the US state’s top dignitaries, declined to tell reporters on Thursday whether she would make the trip, but said she believed it was “important for us to show support for Taiwan.”
Asked about a possible visit from mI And Joe Biden responded in Pelosi on Al Jazeera Wednesday night: “The military thinks it’s not a good idea, but I don’t know where we are.”
A number of US delegations recently visited Taiwan, an island supported by the United States but which China claims as part of its territory.
But Nancy Pelosi would be the highest-ranking American corporate figure to go there in decades.
It is indeed, after Vice President Kamala Harris, who will succeed the president, according to US constitutional law.
‘Dangerous effect’
MI Pelosi said the president did not raise the issue with her directly.
“Maybe the military was worried that the Chinese would shoot down our plane or something,” she said.
“None of us have said they are pro-independence when it comes to Taiwan. It is up to Taiwan to decide,” she added.
The leakage of this travel plan in the press has already infuriated Beijing.
China firmly opposes any form of official exchange between the United States and Taiwan. […] If Pelosi visits Taiwan, this […] It will have a serious impact on the political basis of US-China relations and will indeed send a wrong signal to the independence forces” on the island, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson responded on Tuesday.
“If the United States continues to follow its own idea (on Taiwan), China will take resolute and strong measures to safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said.
Controversy is not welcome for Joe Biden, who is due to speak to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping “within the next 10 days,” he said Wednesday night.
The US president, already grappling with the invasion of Ukraine and a mountain of domestic problems, does not want to enter a new front, while tensions over Taiwan are already very high.
The head of the CIA, Bill Burns, said recently that the question was no longer whether China would invade the island, but “when and how.”
Joe Biden had already angered Beijing when he said at the end of May that the United States would intervene militarily to support Taiwan in the event of an invasion of communist China.
Then he reiterated his adherence to “strategic ambiguity.”
This deliberately vague concept, which has governed Washington’s Taiwanese politics for decades, is for the United States to establish the principle of “one China” with its capital in Beijing, without officially recognizing Taiwan, while backing the country militarily. Island and Bidun say whether or not they would intervene militarily to defend it in the event of an invasion.
