Transits through the United States by high-level Taiwanese officials are not new, and the current transit by President Tsai Ing-wen should not be used by China to stoke tensions and alter the status quo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th April, 2023) Transits through the United States by high-level Taiwanese officials are not new, and the current transit by President Tsai Ing-wen should not be used by China to stoke tensions and alter the status quo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday.
"With regard to President Tsai's transit of the United States, I think the first thing to emphasize is that these transits by high-level Taiwanese authorities are nothing new. They're private, they're unofficial, but they've been going on for years and President Tsai and her predecessors have done the same thing," Blinken said. "In fact, every Taiwan president has transited the United States at one point or another."
Washington's approach to Taiwan remains very consistent and unchanged, including its adherence to the One China policy, the secretary stated.
"So it's a long way of saying that, given that Beijing should not use the transits as an excuse to take any actions to ratchet up tensions to further push it, changing the status quo," he said. "And our objective remains the same: to have peace, to have stability across the Taiwan Strait and to ensure that any differences that exist between the mainland and Taiwan are resolved peacefully."
On March 29, a Taiwanese delegation led by Tsai departed for a 10-day trip to two Central American states. On April 1, the delegation arrived in Guatemala with a transit stop in New York and visited Belize on April 3. On Wednesday, the Taiwanese leader will also make a transit stop in Los Angeles on her way home.
Tsai is scheduled to meet with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles.
China has launched military patrols in two areas of the Taiwan Strait in an apparent response to the meeting.
Beijing firmly opposes the meeting, which it says contradicts the one-China principle and undermines the country's sovereignty, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Tuesday.
