House speaker to meet Taiwan's president in US

 

PRESIDENT TSAI ING-WEN. AP. U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy plans to meet with Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen in April.  The meeting is set to take place in California to avoid exacerbating diplomatic tensions between Washington and Beijing. Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen convinced McCarthy not to travel to Beijing to meet with her, according to unnamed sources cited by the Financial Times. A meeting is now expected to take place in California in the coming weeks. Tsai has been invited to speak at the Reagan Library in southern California while she transits through the state on a trip to Central America. A source cited by Reuters said that McCarthy may still visit Taiwan in the future. China launched large-scale military drills near Taiwan after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island in August 2022. Beijing views Taiwan as a Chinese province and has not ruled out the possibility of unifying with the island by force.