China’s Warnings Loom Over Speaker McCarthy’s Meeting With Taiwan’s Leader - The Wall Street Journal

By

Charles Hutzler

SIMI VALLEY, Calif.—Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are due to hold a much-anticipated meeting Wednesday amid concerns in Taipei and Washington over how far Beijing will go to retaliate over the encounter.

Increasingly broad American support for Taiwan is fueling Beijing’s anxiety: Mr. McCarthy will be the highest-level political leader a Taiwan president has ever met while in the U.S. The California Republican is bringing Congress members from both political parties to see Ms. Tsai, who arrived in Los Angeles on Tuesday after visiting diplomatic allies in Central America.

Their meeting, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library outside Los Angeles, is expected to be low-key, with statements given to the media but likely no extensive policy speech from Ms. Tsai, according to people briefed on the preparations.

Photo: Associated Press

Almost always fraught, relations among the three governments are still suffering the fallout of a visit to Taiwan last August by Mr. McCarthy’s Democratic predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, when Beijing launched missiles over Taiwan and simulated a blockade of the island. Since then, Chinese forces have regularly operated closer to Taiwan, a reminder of China’s goal to control the island.

The McCarthy-Tsai meeting risks setting off another round of Chinese pressure that might further erode Taiwan’s security and pitch U.S.-China relations further into a downward spiral, officials and security specialists said.

Mr. McCarthy “is determined to play the ‘Taiwan card,’” the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles said in a statement posted online Tuesday. “This is repeating a disastrous mistake, will further damage China-U. S. relations and compound the Chinese people’s resolute hatred of the common enemy.”

On Wednesday, a Chinese aircraft carrier transited through waters southeast of Taiwan on its first training mission in the Western Pacific, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. The sea drills of the Shandong aircraft carrier were likely planned and coincided with the People’s Liberation Army’s spring training, said Chieh Chung, an expert on China’s military with Taiwan’s National Policy Foundation, though he said it was possible the PLA accelerated the Shandong’s drills as a response to the meeting between Mr. McCarthy and Ms. Tsai.

Mr. McCarthy, who has said little in recent days about his planned meeting, said last month that Beijing wouldn’t dictate the terms of his contacts with Taiwan. He has shepherded a hard-line approach to China in Congress, establishing a special committee on the threat he says Beijing poses.

While Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said it wouldn’t back down from holding the meeting, the rhetoric from Beijing contrasted with the low profile Ms. Tsai kept while in New York last week.

Ms. Tsai’s U.S. stops, at each end of visits to Guatemala and Belize, are officially called transits and are part of the complex choreography that allows Washington to give Taiwanese leaders a chance to meet supporters while maintaining that it is abiding by pledges to Beijing to keep relations unofficial.

Last week in New York, where throngs of pro-Beijing demonstrators staged protests outside several events, Ms. Tsai made no public policy speeches. Only a summary was published of her remarks at a closed-door award ceremony for her by the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.

“Taiwan cannot risk a redux of last summer, when China seized on former Speaker Pelosi’s trip to Taipei to launch a marathon of military maneuvers,” said Craig Singleton, a China specialist with the Washington think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who attended a breakfast with Ms. Tsai on Friday.

China’s military now routinely patrols closer to Taiwan, shrinking its security buffer, Mr. Singleton said. Some in the Taiwan opposition, he said, are portraying Ms. Tsai’s policies as destabilizing, criticism that could hurt her party in next year’s elections to pick her successor.

Taiwan’s representative office in the U.S. and Biden administration officials said arrangements for Ms. Tsai’s travel were in line with past visits. The administration has repeatedly urged Beijing not to overreact.

Taiwan’s top representative in the U.S., Hsiao Bi-khim, worked assiduously with Washington and Ms. Tsai’s office to smooth out the plans, people briefed on the discussions said.

Mr. McCarthy said last year that if he became speaker he would visit Taiwan, so seeing Ms. Tsai in California may make their meeting less provocative to Beijing.

“Beijing’s reaction will likely depend on whether it perceives any red lines to have been crossed during the content of the upcoming Tsai-McCarthy meeting,” said Paul Haenle, a China specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Though the U.S. switched formal diplomatic relations to Beijing from Taipei more than four decades ago, its role as Taiwan’s military and diplomatic champion has grown as Beijing has built up its military and persisted in its demand to bring Taiwan into its fold, by force if necessary.

Politics in each capital is adding complications. The Biden administration, which is increasing defense training and military sales to Taiwan and regearing the U.S. armed forces for possible conflict with China, is under pressure from Congress, particularly Republicans, to do more.

Administration officials, however, say they want to avoid being seen as a destabilizing force, especially after the Pelosi trip and given that many U.S. allies and partners maintain robust trade and investment relations with China.

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Communication with Beijing dwindled further after a Chinese surveillance balloon traversed North America before the U.S. shot it down. Efforts by the U.S. to set up a call between President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have been turned aside, as Chinese officials said they want to wait until after Ms. Tsai’s trip.

“It is very much the American intention to keep those lines of communication open,” said Kurt Campbell, who oversees Asia policy at the White House’s National Security Council, at an event last week at the Center for a New American Security.

“Our allies and partners want a constructive relationship between the United States and China that does not take the world into a confrontation that no one seeks.”

Chinese officials said Mr. Xi’s instruction to “dare to struggle and be good at struggling” necessitates an aggressive response to anything perceived as harmful to China’s interests.

Some U.S. and Taiwan officials and security specialists see more Chinese naval and air force incursions around Taiwan as a likely if perilous response to the Tsai-McCarthy meeting. Placing Mr. McCarthy and other representatives on a sanctions blacklist, as Beijing did with Mrs. Pelosi, is another potential action.

Others, however, note that China has some reasons for restraint, citing revived attempts in recent weeks to improve relations with Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron is traveling to Beijing this week, along with the European Commission’s head, following visits by leaders from Spain and Germany.

A too forceful Chinese response also risks alarming voters in Taiwan as the island heads into election season. While Ms. Tsai has been abroad, her predecessor as president, Ma Ying-jeou from the opposition Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, has made an unprecedented visit to China, promoting closer, more stable relations and drawing a contrast with tensions under Ms. Tsai.

“For Beijing, Tsai’s transit cannot go unanswered,” said Mr. Singleton of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. While China may launch military drills, he said, a subdued McCarthy-Tsai meeting should be victory enough for Beijing.

—Joyu Wang in Taipei contributed to this article.

Write to Charles Hutzler at charles.hutzler@wsj.com

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