The President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, will make two stops in the United States during her official visit to Guatemala and Belize, announced this Tuesday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the island claimed by the Chinese.
Tsai Ing-wen begins the ten-day trip on March 29, which will stop in New York, on March 30, and in Los Angeles, on April 5, Taiwan’s diplomacy said.
Belize and Guatemala are among the 14 countries that have officially recognized Taiwan from China, although this number could drop to 13, as Honduras intends to establish official relations with Beijing, abandoning Taipei.
The Taiwanese President is due to meet her Guatemalan counterpart, Alejandro Giammattei, and the Prime Minister of Belize, John Briceno.
The leader’s visit will take place two weeks after the diplomatic turnaround for Honduras.
In August 2022, a visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the US House of Representatives, infuriated Beijing and triggered full-scale Chinese military maneuvers around the self-governing island in retaliation.
Taiwan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Yui declined to say whether Tsai Ing-wen plans to meet Pelosi’s successor Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles.
Yui only indicated that the planned stops were “duly agreed with the United States”.
In any case, McCarthy had announced this month that he would meet Tsai in California, and the US State Department downplayed the importance of that meeting in the face of Chinese outrage.
China and Taiwan have lived as two autonomous territories since 1949, when the former Chinese nationalist government took refuge on the island after the defeat in the civil war against the communists. Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory and threatens to reunify it through force if the island formally declares independence.
Taiwan is one of the main sources of friction between China and the United States, mainly because Washington is Taiwan’s main arms supplier and would be its biggest military ally in the event of a possible war with China.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin on Tuesday reiterated his country’s opposition to official contacts between Taiwan and the United States.
In Washington, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel again emphasized that there was nothing unusual for Taiwanese officials traveling through the United States to meet elected officials or participate in public meetings, assuring that US policy towards China “remains unchanged”.
The US presidency (White House) also considered this Tuesday that China should not overreact to the stops in the US planned by the President of Taiwan.
John Kirby, spokesman for President Joe Biden’s National Security Council, highlighted in a press conference that Tsai’s trip is “personal and unofficial”.
Washington, which despite having granted its diplomatic recognition to Beijing in 1979, is the island’s most powerful ally and also its main arms supplier.
Central America has been a strategic region for Beijing and Taipei since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, Dominican Republic and Costa Rica have changed their diplomatic recognition in favor of Beijing in recent years.
These diplomatic changes have increased since the election of Tsai Ing-wen, who advocates a tougher policy towards China by stating that Taiwan is an independent nation and not subordinated to its neighbor.
This Tuesday, the Minister of Education of Germany traveled to Taiwan today for the first visit in 26 years by a German minister to the island claimed by the Chinese, to sign a technological partnership.
