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The chairman of the House Select Committee on China said Saturday the United States must take seriously the threat posed to Taiwan, as Beijing launched military drills around the island in the aftermath of the Taiwanese president’s meetings with American lawmakers.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who attended the meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen in California last week, told The Associated Press that he plans to lead his committee in working to shore up the island government’s defenses, encouraging Congress to expedite military aid to Taiwan.
“I think it all just points to what is obvious,” Gallagher told the AP, arguing that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is intent on reunifying Taiwan with the mainland.
“We need to be moving heaven and earth to enhance our deterrence and denial posture, so that Xi Jinping concludes that he just can’t do it,” Gallagher said.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) conducted drills with warships and dozens of fighter jets around Taiwan on Saturday, the Taiwanese government said, in what was viewed as retaliation for the meeting between the U.S. lawmakers and the president of the self-ruled island democracy claimed by the CCP as part of its territory.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy hosted Tsai in a bipartisan session at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, with more than a dozen members of the U.
