China stages combat patrols after warning against Tsai-McCarthy meeting

NEW YORK/TAIPEI – Nine Chinese aircraft crossed the Taiwan Strait’s median line on Friday to carry out combat readiness patrols, Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said, days after Beijing threatened to retaliate if President Tsai Ing-wen meets with US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Ms Tsai arrived in New York on Wednesday on her way to Central America,

and on her way back to Taipei next week will stop in Los Angeles, where she is expected to meet Mr McCarthy, an interaction China has warned could lead to a “serious confrontation” in United States-China relations.

Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said the nine Chinese aircraft crossed at points in the north, centre and south of the Taiwan Strait’s median line, which used to serve as an unofficial buffer between the two sides. 

Taiwan’s armed forces responded using its own aircraft and ships to monitor the situation using the principle of “not escalating conflicts or causing disputes”, the ministry said. 

“The communist military’s deployment of forces deliberately created tension in the Taiwan Strait, not only undermining peace and stability, but also has a negative impact on regional security and economic development,” it said in a statement. 

The ministry condemned what it called “such irrational actions”. 

There was no immediate response from China.

Ms Tsai’s visit comes at a time when US relations with China are at what some analysts see as their worst level since Washington normalised ties with Beijing in 1979 and switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei.

Beijing says Taiwan belongs to “one China” and, as a Chinese province, has no right to state-to-state ties. Taiwan disputes this.

On what is her first US stopover since 2019, Ms Tsai touted Taiwan’s economic, security and diplomatic achievements in a closed-door speech on Wednesday night to overseas Taiwanese in New York, her office said in a statement on Thursday, calling the island a “beacon of democracy in Asia”.

“In particular, the relationship between Taiwan and the United States is closer than ever,” she said, noting “significant progress” in economic and security cooperation.

Ms Tsai said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing – the world’s largest contract chipmaker – establishing a factory in Phoenix, Arizona, demonstrated the island’s technological strength.

Though Taiwan faced “enormous challenges”, it would not be isolated, Ms Tsai said.

She also thanked the US government for implementing security agreements with Taiwan, including nine announced arms sales by President Joe Biden’s administration.

Ms Laura Rosenberger, chair at the Washington headquarters of the American Institute in Taiwan, a US government-run, non-profit organisation that carries out unofficial relations with Taiwan, and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy also attended the event, according to Ms Tsai’s office.

On Thursday, Ms Tsai spoke at an event held by the Hudson Institute and said an unstable Taiwan Strait poses serious economic and security risks to the world, according to Mr Chang Tun-han, deputy secretary-general at the Presidential Office.

Ms Tsai added that it means Taiwan not only needs increased security cooperation, but also a stronger economic partnership.

A senior Taiwan security official said earlier that the island expects a less severe reaction from Beijing to a Tsai-McCarthy meeting than when then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in 2022,

something that prompted China to stage major military drills.

“She will be meeting in the United States, so the political complexity is not as high as the Speaker coming to Taiwan,” Taiwan National Security Bureau director-general Tsai Ming-yen told Taiwan’s Parliament.

He added that

Taiwan had been conducting dry runs on responses to a rise in tensions

while Ms Tsai is away, including when she is flying, and that she can be reached any time by her top security officials.

McCarthy meeting

A meeting with Mr McCarthy would be the first between a Taiwanese leader and a US House Speaker on US soil, although it is seen as a potentially less provocative alternative to him visiting Taiwan, something he has said he hopes to do.

As House Speaker, Mr McCarthy is third in the US leadership succession hierarchy, and China has repeatedly warned US officials not to meet Ms Tsai, seeing it as showing support for the island’s desire to be recognised as a separate country.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Zhu Fenglian said in Beijing on Wednesday that if Ms Tsai met Mr McCarthy,

China would “definitely take measures to resolutely fight back”,

and Ms Xu Xueyuan, charge d’affaires at China’s Washington embassy, said such a meeting “could lead to another serious confrontation in the China-US relationship”.

The US, like most countries, maintains only unofficial ties with Taipei, but US law requires the government to provide the island with the means to defend itself, and it facilitates unofficial stopover visits.

The US transit is Ms Tsai’s seventh since taking office in 2016 and comes amid concerns in the United States and elsewhere that

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

might embolden China to move against Taiwan.

The White House urged China on Wednesday not to use Ms Tsai’s “normal” stopover in the US as a pretext to increase aggressive activity against Taiwan.

On Thursday, the US said that reprisals by China over Ms Tsai’s visit would not alter US policy, insisting that such stops are nothing new.

“Unilateral attempts to change the status quo will not pressure the United States government to alter our longstanding practice to facilitate transits through the United States,” said Mr Daniel Kritenbrink, the top US diplomat for East Asia.

“There is absolutely no reason for China to overreact to this longstanding, routine practice,” Mr Kritenbrink told reporters in Washington. REUTERS, AFP