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Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen is in California on Wednesday, where she will meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in an encounter that is being closely watched in Beijing.
The pair are set to meet, along with other American officials from both political parties, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on the northern outskirts of Los Angeles, rather than in Taipei, as originally proposed by McCarthy.
For Tsai, the meeting will cap off a high-stakes international trip intended to shore up Taiwan’s relations with its limited number of foreign partners and to prove to voters in her last year in office that strengthening ties with the U.S. has been worth the fallout, as Taipei’s relations with China steadily deteriorate.
„Tsai’s trip is not simply a ‚graduation trip‘ [as she finishes her term]. It is definitely an assist for raising the foreign diplomacy of Taiwan,“ says Lin Ying Yu, an international relations professor at Taiwan’s Tamkang University.
Last week, Tsai flew to New York for a private dinner with the Hudson Institute, an American think tank. On Wednesday, just hours before her planned meeting with McCarthy, Tsai’s office published photos revealing she had also quietly met with three U.S. senators in New York last week: Republican senators Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Joni Ernst of Iowa, as well as Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. They discussed proposed U.S. legislation that would sanction China, should it invade Taiwan.
Tsai then made her way to Central America for official visits to Guatemala and Belize, two of the 13 countries that recognize Taiwan and not Beijing as a legitimate government.Tsai’s visit marks a delicate balancing act and comes amid Chinese warnings
In Taiwan, Tsai’s trip has been shadowed by concerns over the island’s tense relations with its hostile neighbor, China.
