(Washington) Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy will meet Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen on Wednesday, despite threats of retaliation from China.
The meeting is planned in the suburbs of Los Angeles, at the Ronald Reagan presidential library, with several other congressmen, leader McCarthy’s team said in a statement Monday.
China has promised to “fight back” to a possible meeting between the two leaders.
Last August, the visit to Taiwan of Nancy Pelosi, then president of the American House of Representatives, provoked the ire of Beijing, which had carried out in retaliation for very important military exercises around the island.
China considers Taiwan, with a population of 24 million, to be one of its provinces it has yet to reunite with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
She sees with displeasure the rapprochement at work in recent years between the Taiwanese authorities and the United States, which has provided the island with military support against Beijing for several decades.
