TOKYO (AP) — Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said Friday that China will not isolate Taiwan by preventing American officials from traveling there.
She made the remarks in Tokyo on the final leg of her Asian tour, highlighted by a visit to Taiwan that has angered China.
The Chinese have tried to isolate Taiwan, Pelosi said, including recently by preventing the self-ruled island from joining the World Health Organization.
“They may try to prevent Taiwan from visiting or participating in other places, but they will not isolate Taiwan by preventing us from traveling there,” she said.
Pelosi said her trip to Taiwan was not intended to change the island’s status quo, but to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait. She also praised Taiwan’s hard-won democracy, including its progress in diversity and success in technology and business, and criticized China’s violations of trade agreements, arms proliferation and human rights problems.
Pelosi, the first House speaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years, said Wednesday in Taipei that the U.S. commitment to democracy on the island and elsewhere “remains ironclad.”
Pelosi and five other members of Congress arrived in Tokyo late Thursday after visiting Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea.
In Taipei on Wednesday, Pelosi said America’s commitment to democracy in Taiwan and elsewhere “remains ironclad.” She became the first Speaker of the House to visit the island in 25 years.
China, which claims Taiwan and has threatened to annex it by force if necessary, called his visit to the island a provocation and on Thursday began military exercises, including missile strike training, in six areas around Taiwan in what could be the most the big one from the mid-1990s.
Pelosi said China had initiated “the strikes, possibly using our visit as an excuse.”
Earlier on Friday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said China’s military exercises targeting Taiwan posed a “serious problem” that threatened regional peace and security after five ballistic missiles fired as part of the drills landed in the exclusive economic zone of Japan.
Kishida, speaking after breakfast with Pelosi and her congressional delegation, said the missile launches must be “ceased immediately.”
Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said five missiles landed Thursday in Japan’s exclusive economic zone off Hateruma, an island far south of Japan’s main islands. He said Japan protested to China, saying the missiles “threaten Japan’s national security and the lives of the Japanese people, which we strongly condemn.”
The Defense Ministry later said it believed the other four missiles fired from China’s southeast coast of Fujian flew over Taiwan.
Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, attending a regional meeting in Cambodia, said China’s actions “seriously affect peace and stability in the region and the international community, and we demand an immediate halt to the military exercises.”
In recent years, Japan has boosted its defense capability and military presence in southwestern Japan and outlying islands, including Okinawa, which is about 700 kilometers (420 miles) northeast of Taiwan. Many residents say they worry their island will quickly become embroiled in a Taiwanese conflict. Okinawa is home to most of the roughly 50,000 US troops based in Japan under a bilateral security pact.
At the breakfast earlier Friday, Pelosi and her congressional delegation also discussed their shared security concerns about China, North Korea and Russia and pledged their commitment to work for peace and stability in Taiwan, Kishida said. Pelosi was also scheduled to hold talks with her Japanese counterpart, House Speaker Hiroyuki Hosoda.
Japan and its key ally, the United States, have been pushing for new security and economic frameworks with other democracies in the Indo-Pacific and Europe as a counter to China’s growing influence amid rising tensions between Beijing and Taipei.
Days before Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, a group of high-ranking Japanese lawmakers, including former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, visited the island and discussed regional security with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Ishiba said Japan, while working with the United States to prevent conflict in the Indo-Pacific, wants a defense agreement with Taiwan.
On Thursday, the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations issued a statement saying “there is no justification for using a visit as a pretext for aggressive military activity in the Taiwan Strait.” It said China’s “escalating response risks increasing tensions and destabilizing the region.”
China expressed its displeasure at the announcement of the last-minute cancellation of talks between the foreign ministers of China and Japan on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Cambodia on Thursday.
Pelosi held talks Thursday in South Korea, also a key US ally, which has stayed away from the Taiwan issue, apparently to avoid upsetting China, focusing on the growing nuclear threat from North Korea.
In recent years, South Korea has struggled to find a balance between the United States and China as their rivalry deepened.
China’s military drills, which began on Thursday, involve the navy, air force and other departments and will continue until Sunday. They included missile strikes on targets in the seas north and south of the island in an echo of China’s last major military exercises in 1995 and 1996, aimed at intimidating Taiwan’s leaders and voters.
Taiwan has put its military on alert and held civil defense exercises, while the US has numerous naval assets in the area.
China also sent warplanes to Taiwan and blocked imports of its citrus fruits and fish.
China views the island as a breakaway province and views visits to Taiwan by foreign officials as recognition of its sovereignty.
The Biden and Pelosi administrations have said the United States remains committed to the so-called one-China policy, which recognizes Beijing as China’s government but allows informal relations and defense ties with Taipei. The administration discouraged but did not prevent Pelosi from visiting.
Pelosi is a longtime advocate for human rights in China. She, along with other lawmakers, visited Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1991 to support democracy two years after a bloody military crackdown on protesters in the square.
As leader of the House of Representatives, Pelosi’s trip has heightened tensions between the US and China more than visits by other members of Congress. The last House Speaker to visit Taiwan was Newt Gingrich in 1997.
China and Taiwan, which split in 1949 after a civil war, have no formal relations but multibillion-dollar business ties.
___
Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Huizhong Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.
Add Comment