The Presidential Office yesterday confirmed that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is to meet US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California today. Meanwhile, 20 Chinese military aircraft and three warships were detected in areas around Taiwan.
The confirmation followed an announcement by McCarthy’s office that the speaker is to host a bipartisan meeting with Tsai at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley today (tomorrow morning Taipei time).
Tsai is in Belize on the second leg of her Central America tour that also took her to Guatemala. On her return trip, she is scheduled to make a stopover in Los Angeles.
Photo: AP
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning (毛寧) told a daily news briefing yesterday that Beijing “will closely follow the developments and resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said that Taiwan has never been part of China, and that Beijing’s recent criticism has become increasingly “absurd.”
“Taiwan, the Republic of China, is a sovereign country, and has the right to make its own determination in developing relations with other countries in the world,” it said in a statement. “It does not accept interference or suppression by any country for any reason, and will not limit itself because of intimidation or interference.”
Meanwhile, the Ministry of National Defense said Chinese military aircraft were spotted 20 times in Taiwan’s general vicinity from 6am on Monday to 6am yesterday.
One of them, a high-altitude, long-range uncrewed aerial vehicle Harbin BZK-005 used for reconnaissance, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, the defense ministry said in a statement.
Eight flights, seven of which were J-16 fighters and one a Y-8 anti-submarine warfare plane, crossed into the southwestern part of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, it said.
The defense ministry did not release the flight paths of the other planes or identify or disclose the path of the three warships spotted in areas around Taiwan.
It added that the military scrambled combat air and naval patrols, and deployed defense missile systems to track the Chinese military aircraft and warships.
The latest sortie of Chinese warplanes and ships was generally in line — in terms of flight numbers and where they went — with similar sorties in the past few weeks.
Additional reporting by AP
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