(Washington) Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy will meet Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen on Wednesday, despite threats of retaliation from China.
The meeting is planned in the suburbs of Los Angeles, at the presidential library of Ronald Reagan, with several other elected members of Congress, said the team of leader McCarthy in a press release Monday.
PHOTO MOSES CASTILLO, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen
China has promised to “retaliate” to a possible meeting between the two leaders.
Last August, the visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, then president of the American House of Representatives, provoked the ire of Beijing, which had carried out in retaliation for very important military exercises around the island.
China considers Taiwan, with a population of 24 million, to be one of its provinces it has yet to successfully reunify with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
She sees with dissatisfaction the rapprochement at work in recent years between the Taiwanese authorities and the United States, which has provided the island with military support against Beijing for several decades.