China: Pelosi's visit to Taiwan could cross Beijing’s 'red line'
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Pelosi's visit to Taiwan would send an extremely dangerous political signal to the outside world, says China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
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China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned, on Thursday, that “Beijing will interpret US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hypothetical visit to Taiwan as a step over the red line,” according to the South China Morning Post.
"If Pelosi, a political leader of the United States, knowingly visits Taiwan, it would be a malicious provocation against China’s sovereignty and gross interference in China’s internal affairs, and would send an extremely dangerous political signal to the outside world," he said.
According to China Daily, Wang tackled the issue during a phone call with French diplomatic counselor Emmanuel Bonne.
Pelosi had planned to visit Japan first, and then, according to some Japanese media, arrive in Taiwan on Sunday. That would have been the first visit to the island by a US House of Representatives speaker in the last 25 years.
China warned, on Thursday, that it would take strong measures if Pelosi visited, saying such a visit would have a negative impact on Chinese-US relations.
It is worth mentioning that the 43rd anniversary of the United States signing the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act will be marked on Sunday.
The White House is still guided by Act, in which Congress mandated the US to provide weapons to "enable Taiwan to maintain sufficient self-defense capabilities." The law does not clarify whether the US would militarily intervene at some point.
China has repeatedly urged the US to tread carefully on the topic of Taiwan: "China has no room for compromise on issues involving its core interests," Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in reply to Biden's statements.
While the United States has long supplied the Taiwanese government with weapons of war, the pace of armament sales rapidly increased after 2017. Between 2017 and 2021, the US sold $18.3 billion in weapons to Taiwan, a trend that Biden has continued since taking office in January 2021.
