Meeting would be provocation no matter where

According to a recent report by the Financial Times, Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen will meet with US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California next month while on transit to Central America.

Tsai has previously made use of her “visits” to the few countries in Central America and the Caribbean that are still among the island’s “diplomatic allies” to have a “transit stay” in the United States.

But the situation this year is drastically different from that of 2019, when she made her last such trip and spent four days on a “transit stay” in the US out of an 11-day trip to four Central American countries.

Today, neither Sino-US relations nor the situation in the Taiwan Straits is comparable to how they were four years ago. Both are more complicated and fraught with risks, as not only is the Joe Biden administration intent on playing the “Taiwan card” as part of its strategy to contain China, but the secessionist-minded Tsai administration is speculating on that.

The fight against the COVID-19 pandemic should have provided a chance for the two sides of the Straits to de-escalate tensions. However, due to the collusion between the Tsai administration and Washington, the tensions have only escalated.

Then House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reckless visit to the island in August directly pushed the tensions across the Straits as well as between China and the US to the brink of conflict.

Pelosi’s provocation sparked strong condemnation from China and prompted it to hold military drills around the island as a warning that it would not tolerate any attempt to sever the island from its motherland.

The no-comment replies from Taipei and Washington suggest that the purpose of the “anonymous sources” from the United States in releasing the information this time is to test the reaction of the Chinese mainland.

Those parties that are trying to probe Beijing’s reaction with such unverified reports should save the trouble as they should know that Beijing will by no means tolerate any actions in support of “Taiwan independence”.

At present, both Washington and Taipei are trying to weave the Taiwan question into the fabric of the world’s concerns over the Ukraine crisis in a bid to eliminate Beijing’s space to resolve the Taiwan question peacefully. But the two issues are different in nature.

The Taiwan question concerns China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The consequences of any meeting between Tsai and McCarthy will be solely on the heads of the secessionists and their US patrons.

Editorial, China Daily