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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is scheduled to travel to Taiwan this week, according to a congressional official and a Taiwanese official familiar with the route.
That would make her the most sensible U. S. official to climb the autonomous island in decades.
Pelosi’s plans, which have yet to be officially confirmed, have been the subject of China’s bellicose rhetoric in recent weeks, adding suggestions that her plane could be shot down.
U. S. officials have concluded in recent days that China’s belligerent threats against the speaker were an intimidating tactic, the congressional official said.
A senior U. S. defense official The U. S. military told reporters friday that U. S. military assets had not been redeployed. The U. S. Military in the region reacted to Chinese rhetoric around the speaker’s trip, but that several warships were already in the South and East China Seas.
President Joe Biden’s military and national security advisers had warned that Pelosi opposed the visit, POLITICO reported in the past, given rising tensions between Washington and Beijing. In a phone call last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Biden that, as far as Taiwan is concerned, “those who play with a chimney will eventually get burned. “
Beijing views Taiwan as an inseparable element of China and has strongly questioned what it sees as U. S. interference in domestic affairs.
Meanwhile, in Washington, fears have risen in recent months that Xi plans to invade the island. The United States has maintained its so-called “one China” policy and has no official diplomat with Taiwan, but has affirmed Taipei’s right to self-defense. and has sent billions of dollars in weapons to bolster its arsenal.
Pelosi was in Singapore on Monday as part of a holiday in 4 Asian countries. It is also scheduled to stop in Malaysia, South Korea and Japan during the holidays. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks (D-N. Y. ) and the Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Takano (D-Calif. ) is among the lawmakers accompanying Pelosi.
“We look forward to productive meetings that will continue to tell the work of Congress to advance our values and interests and strengthen our partnerships in the region,” Pelosi said over the weekend.
She refused to verify her travels to Taiwan, which brought up dangers to the safety of the speaker, who is on the timeline after the U. S. presidency. USA POLITICO is withholding Pelosi’s expected arrival date.
In recent weeks, the confrontation between Pelosi and the Biden administration over their plans has spread to the public. Biden himself had said the military “thinks it’s not a smart concept right now” for Pelosi to make a stopover on the island.
Although Pelosi declined to talk about her plans, she told reporters Friday that Congress deserves to play a bigger role in selling Biden’s security goals in the Indo-Pacific, noting that “we have global responsibilities. “
Pelosi has been among the most consistent Chinese hawks for the past three decades, even taking on her own when it comes to the risk Beijing poses to U. S. security and economic interests. UU. la crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
American and Taiwanese figures have become bolder to show their support for the relationship, which angered China in the process. Bi-khim Hsiao, the Democratic Island’s de facto representative in the United States, attended Biden’s inauguration. Four months later, U. S. Ambassador to Palau John Hennessey-Niland has become the first acting U. S. envoy to call in Taiwan since Washington severed official ties with Taipei in 1979.
And China’s aggression has led current and former officials, lawmakers on both sides, to push for a radical shift in U. S. position toward Taiwan, abandoning the so-called doctrine of “strategic ambiguity” that has guided U. S. policy toward Taiwan for more than four decades.
Biden himself has said three times that the U. S. will come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of an invasion attempt through China, clearing up the ambiguity, but he and his officials continue to insist that there has been no replacement in U. S. policy. U. S. in Taiwan.
On Monday, China’s Maritime Security Administration announced a new army training circular in the South China Sea from August 2 to 6, building a series of live-fire artillery drills announced last week. Monday also marks the 95th anniversary of Popular Liberation. Army, a moment in which training is accentuated to mark the occasion.
The Japan-based aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan has been patrolling the South China Sea since last week, and last month, the destroyer USS Benfold transited the Taiwan Strait 3 times in a week, a move Beijing called a “provocation. “considers the narrow waterway between mainland China and Taiwan to be a component of its internal waters.
Paul McLeary contributed to this report.