US will not abandon Taiwan in face of Chinese pressure: Nancy Pelosi in Taiwan
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged that the US wouldn’t abandon Taiwan, reaffirming US support for the democratically elected government in Taipei despite fresh threats of military action by Beijing.
Pelosi made her comments on Wednesday during a Presidential Office ceremony with Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen. The California Democrat’s arrival in Taiwan late Tuesday made her the highest-ranking American official to visit in a quarter century.
“We will not abandon our commitment to Taiwan and we are proud of our enduring friendship,” Pelosi said. “Now more than ever American solidarity with Taiwan is crucial,” she added. “That’s the message we’re bringing here today.”
Tsai, for her own part, said Pelosi’s visit showed Taiwan’s staunch international support in the face of a years-long international pressure campaign led by Beijing.
“Facing deliberately heightened military threats, Taiwan will not back down,” Tsai said, after conferring an award on the visiting US lawmaker.
China, which regards Taiwan as part of its territory, has announced the most provocative military drills in decades around the island in the wake of Pelosi’s visit, which risks sparking a crisis between the world’s biggest economies. President Xi Jinping told President Joe Biden last week he would “resolutely safeguard China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity” and that “whoever plays with fire will get burned.”
The Foreign Ministry in Beijing said in a statement after Pelosi landed that “China will take all necessary measures to resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and all consequences must be born by the US and the Taiwan independence forces.”
Taiwan shares were down 0.1% as of 10:56 a.m. local time. China’s benchmark CSI 300 Index fell 0.4%, erasing an earlier gain of as much as 1.1%.
The White House has sought to dial back rising tensions with China, emphasizing that Congress is an independent branch of government. Pelosi is the highest-ranking American politician to visit Taiwan since then-House speaker Newt Gingrich did so in 1997.
Under an agreement reached in 1978 to normalize relations between China and the US, Washington agreed to recognize only Beijing as the seat of China’s government, while acknowledging — but not endorsing — the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.
The US has insisted that any unification between the island and mainland must be peaceful, and supplied Taiwan with advanced weaponry while remaining deliberately ambiguous about whether US forces would help defend against a Chinese attack.