Taiwan’s leader visits East-West Center as China criticizes his two-day visit to Hawaii

Taiwan’s leader visited a U.S. State Department-funded think tank and educational institution Sunday on the second day of a two-day visit to Hawaii that’s part of a Pacific island tour that has already triggered criticism from Beijing.

Lai Ching-te met and exchanged gifts with the president of the East-West Center, which is on the University of Hawaii’s flagship Manoa campus. He spoke to an audience at the center but journalists were escorted out of a conference hall before he began speaking.

China’s Foreign Ministry said it “strongly condemned” U.S. support for Lai’s visit and had lodged a complaint with the U.S. It also denounced a newly announced U.S. weapons sale to Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as its own territory.

“China will closely monitor the situation’s development, and take resolute and forceful measures to safeguard the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said the statement.

Hawaii was Lai’s first stop on a weeklong voyage that will later take him to the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau. They account for three of the 12 countries that Taipei has formal diplomatic relations with.

Suzanne Puanani Vares-Lum, president of the East-West Center, said her institution is the perfect place for Lai to visit because it promotes relations among the United States, Asia and the Pacific.

She said it’s not unusual for leaders from around the world to come to Hawaii given the state’s location and what makes it special.

“There is something about Hawaii that allows us to really just see where we connect on a human to human level,” Vares-Lum said in an interview.

Lai’s predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, visited the East-West Center in 2019 and 2017.

On Saturday, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green hosted Lai at the state’s emergency management agency where they discussed disaster preparedness. Green, who was an emergency room physician before becoming governor, posted on social media that he and Lai discussed how their experiences in health care informed their governance. Lai is also a physician by training and obtained a Master of Public Health degree from Harvard University.

“Together, we extended a warm aloha to Lai and his delegation, highlighting Hawaii’s shared values of resilience and collaboration with Taiwan,” Green said in an Instagram post.

Lai also posed for photos with Hawaii congressional representatives and state lawmakers at a dinner banquet with the Taiwanese American community.

U.S. Rep. Ed Case, a Democrat who represents Honolulu in Congress, said on social media that he told the audience that “our ties endured on shared values and interests to advance mutual goals and meet shared challenges.”

It is unclear whether Lai with meet with any senior officials from the Biden administration or anyone from the incoming Trump administration during his Hawaii stay.

President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg in July that Taiwan should pay for its defense. The island has purchased billions of dollars of defense weaponry from the U.S.

Trump evaded answering whether he would defend the island from Chinese military action.

The new arms announced by the U.S. State Department Friday include $385 million in spare parts and equipment for a fleet of F-16s, as well as support for tactical communication system to Taiwan.

The U.S. is obligated to help the island defend itself under the Taiwan Relations Act but maintains a position of strategic ambiguity over whether it would ever get involved if Taiwan were to be invaded by China.

Tsai drew vocal opposition from China when she stopped in New York last year on her way to Latin America. She met with former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the time.

The Chinese military also launched drills around Taiwan last year as a “stern warning” over what it called collusion between “separatists and foreign forces” days after Lai stopped over in the U.S.

China also strongly objects to leading American politicians visiting the island as it views any official contact with foreign governments and Taiwan as an infringement on its claims of sovereignty over Taiwan. Washington switched its formal recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. AUDREY McAVOY, HONOLULU, MDT/AP