WASHINGTON
US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet with Taiwan’s president in California on Wednesday, his office announced on Monday.
The meeting with Tsai Ing-wen will be bipartisan, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.
Last week, China vowed to take “countermeasures” in response to any meeting between Tsai and a US official during her transit to Central America, stating that such a meeting would “undermine peace across the Taiwan Strait.”
However, Washington said Beijing should not use this transit as a pretext to step up aggressive activity around the strait.
Tsai, 66, left the capital Taipei for a 10-day trip to Central America on Wednesday.
She made her first stopover in New York before flying to Central America. She is expected in Los Angeles on the return leg of her trip.
An unannounced trip to Taiwan by McCarthy’s predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, in August triggered an unprecedented response from China, which launched military operations around Taiwan, a self-governing island of 24 million sitting across the Taiwan Strait from mainland China.
China considers Taiwan a “breakaway province” while Taipei has insisted on its independence since 1949.
