US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen plan to meet in California instead of Taipei to avoid an aggressive response from Beijing to the meeting on the island.
McCarthy, a California Republican who became Speaker in January, said last summer that he would visit Taiwan if elected.
But he and Tsai have now agreed to meet in California instead, in a move designed to avoid a demonstration of force by the People’s Liberation Army similar to when Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August.
“We shared some intelligence about what the Chinese Communist Party was doing and what kind of threats they were making,” a senior Taiwanese official said of the information Taipei provided to McCarthy’s team.
The official said China is “not in a good situation right now” and more decisions will be made by Xi and his inner circle.
Pelosi’s visit is only the second visit to Taiwan by a Speaker since Newt Gingrich in 1997.
Tsai will visit California and New York in early April as part of a trip to Central America. He also decided to accept an invitation to speak at the Reagan Library in southern California, according to several people including a senior Taiwanese official.
McCarthy’s office declined to comment. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute confirmed that they invited Tsai to speak.
The People’s Republic of China claims Taiwan as its territory although it never ruled the island.
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