Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen did not meet US president-elect Donald Trump or members of his team during her stopover in the United States on the weekend, avoiding a move that would have riled a jittery Beijing. A spokeswoman for Trump\u2019s transition team, Jessica Ditto, said in an email on Saturday there would be no meetings between Tsai and officials representing the president-elect in the US, the \u00adAssociated Press reported. Tsai arrived in Houston on \u00adSaturday on her way to Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El \u00adSalvador. She will stop off in San Francisco after her visit to Central American allies before flying back to Taiwan. Analysts said any meeting \u00adbetween Tsai and Trump officials would have seriously angered Beijing, which is concerned Trump may abandon decades of US policy towards Taiwan when he takes office. Trump has questioned why the US should continue to abide by the one-China principle under which it does not recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state. Beijing was also angered by a telephone call between Tsai and Trump in December when she congratulated the president-elect on his win in the polls. Taiwan and the mainland have been governed separately since Kuomintang forces fled to the island in 1949 after losing the civil war to communist forces. Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway Chinese province. Tsai kept a low profile after her arrival in Houston, with analysts suggesting this was the best strategy with the risk of the stopover increasing the ire of Beijing. Taiwanese media reported she avoided interviews in Houston and barred all people attending a dinner hosted by ethnic Taiwanese in the southern US city from bringing cameras or smartphones to try to reduce publicity. The only remarks she made to journalists waiting in freezing weather outside her hotel were, \u201cIt is too cold! Get in. Don\u2019t stand outside,\u201d Taipei-based Central News Agency reported. But she did meet several US dignitaries, according to Taiwanese media. Texas Republican Congressman Blake Farenthold and the chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, James Moriarty, met her at the airport, along with Taiwan\u2019s envoy to Washington, Stanley Kao. They accompanied her to a cancer centre and a museum displaying treasures loaned by Taiwan\u2019s National Palace Museum. Taiwanese media also reported that Tsai met Houston\u2019s mayor, Sylvester Turner, and Randall Schriver, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs at the State Department. They remained tight-lipped over what they had said. Chen Ming-wen, a legislator with the governing Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan who is accompanying Tsai on her trip, said Tsai was also expected to receive phone calls from other US political dignitaries and senators. Taiwan\u2019s Presidential Office has declined to reveal the full itineraries for Tsai\u2019s US stopovers in what observers see as a bid to play down the matter. William Stanton, a former \u00addirector of the American Institute in Taiwan, the US representative office on the island, said Tsai was wise to maintain a low profile during her US stay. \u201cNo one wants bigger trouble now,\u201d he said, referring to the phone conversation between Tsai and Trump that \u00adangered the mainland. Shi Yinhong, an adviser to Beijing\u2019s State Council and director of the Centre for American Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, said Tsai was handling \u00adsensitivities over ties with the US intelligently. \u201cTsai Ing-wen has remained low key since that phone call with Trump. She has even ordered a ban on all members of the DPP from talking about Trump and cross-straits relations. She is smarter than you think,\u201d he said. \u201cShe has tried her best to avoid giving [the mainland] any excuses to \u00adseverely punish Taiwan.\u201d Additional reporting by Catherine Wong<\/p>\n