China reacted with anger on Monday to a planned visit next month to the United States by “separatist” Taiwan presidential frontrunner Vice President William Lai, as the government in Taipei said it saw no reason to overreact to mere transit stops.
Taiwanese presidents and vice presidents traditionally make transits of the United States on trips to the few remaining countries still to maintain formal diplomatic ties with the Chinese-claimed island, and this time Lai will be attending the swearing in of Paraguay’s new president, Santiago Pena.
This U.S. trip, though, has extra significance as Lai is running to succeed President Tsai Ing-wen at Taiwan’s next election in January, and presidential candidates generally visit the United States ahead of the vote to discuss their run with officials there. Lai is currently leading in most opinion polls.
Such transits infuriate China, which views them as covert support by the United States for Taiwan’s separateness from China and challenge to Beijing’s territorial claims.
In April, China staged war games around Taiwan after Tsai met U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles while on her way back from Central America.
Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said the government had already lodged a diplomatic complaint with the United States about Lai’s stopovers.
“China firmly opposes any form of official exchanges between the United States and Taiwan, resolutely opposes sneaky visits by Taiwan independence separatists in any name or for any reason, and resolutely opposes any form of connivance by the United States to support Taiwan independence separatists,” she said.
“China will pay close attention to the development of the situation and take resolute and forceful measures to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Lai’s transit was “routine” and consistent with past practice, given that 10 Taiwanese vice presidents, including Lai himself, have traveled via the United States.
“There is no reason for the PRC to use this transit as a pretext for provocative actions,” Blinken said on Monday, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
Blinken added that he had repeatedly told Chinese counterparts, including top diplomat Wang Yi during a meeting in Jakarta last week, that “we have no desire to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. Our policy hasn’t changed”.
The upcoming election in Taiwan is very important there is some discontent with the DPP, as shown here: https://twitter.com/Chunyu_China/status/1680857161751236609
Also this article has a great breakdown of the political situation there: https://jamestown.org/program/why-taiwans-2024-presidential-election-is-wide-open/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-jamestown-foundation/
“Shortly after Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) suffered the worst loss in its 37-year history, Nikkei Asia Review published an article entitled “Taiwan’s KMT has a mountain to climb for 2024 presidential race” that cautioned not to read too much into the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) success in the local elections last November (Nikkei Asia, November 29, 2022).”
“Much like its handling of the pandemic, the Tsai administration’s cross-Strait policy was popular early in her second term, but is showing signs of strain given its inflexible nature. To be sure, Taiwanese elected Tsai in part because they trusted her more than the KMT’s 2020 presidential nominee Han Kuo-yu to safeguard Taiwan’s sovereignty and way of life. As Tsai defeated Han in a landslide in which she received 57.1 percent of the vote, she entered her second term with a strong mandate to stand firm against Chinese aggression (Taipei Times, January 12, 2020). However, the ripple effect from U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last August has complicated what had been a straightforward task for the DPP. As long as China’s coercion of Taiwan was confined to sanctions, poaching of diplomatic allies and small-scale gray-zone activity, the Tsai administration could focus on strengthening ties with the U.S., Japan and other democracies, while taking care not to escalate tensions with Beijing. The DPP faced little public pressure to re-establish dialogue with China given it’s hostility toward Taiwan, especially when the pandemic occupied the attention of Taiwanese society. Pelosi’s visit was a game changer, though. Even if many Taiwanese welcomed the diplomatic recognition the visit conferred on their country, after observing China’s unprecedented martial muscle flexing, they realized that the stakes of this game had risen sharply”
As with most countries the prospect of a war that could destroy economy, kill citizens, and prevent any peaceful discussions is one not favored by most.