The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday extended regards on behalf of Taiwan to US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has tested positive for COVID-19, requiring her to cancel a planned visit to Asia, which reportedly would have included a stop in Taiwan.
Pelosi, 82, was scheduled to lead a US Congressional delegation to visit Japan this weekend and was reportedly planning to arrive in Taiwan on Sunday.
However, the trip has been postponed because she has tested positive for COVID-19, her spokesman Drew Hammill said on Thursday.
Photo: Bloomberg
“After testing negative this week, Speaker Pelosi received a positive test result for COVID-19 and is currently asymptomatic. The Speaker is fully vaccinated and boosted, and is thankful for the robust protection the vaccine has provided,” Hammill wrote on Twitter.
The speaker is quarantining according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance, and encourages everyone to get vaccinated and boosted, as well as get tested regularly, Hammill said in his messages on Twitter.
Presidential Office spokesman Xavier Chang (張惇涵) said that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) gave her sincere regards to Pelosi, who is a “truly good friend of Taiwan,” and wished Pelosi well.
Neither Hammill nor Chang confirmed reports that Pelosi had planned to make a stop in Taiwan. Pelosi would have been the highest-ranking elected official from the US to visit Taiwan in the past few years.
Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) said the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the US, Taiwan’s de facto embassy, conveys its well-wishes to Pelosi.
China reacted strongly to the idea of Pelosi visiting Taiwan. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday that the visit would be a “malicious provocation to China’s sovereignty” and “consequences will be borne by the US.”
Wang’s comment was absurd, Taiwan’s foreign ministry said.
China’s authoritarian regime does not understand democracy nor does it know how to respect public opinion, the ministry in Taipei said, adding that Beijing only knows how to browbeat other nations and their democratically elected officials.
Taiwan is not subordinate to the People’s Republic of China, nor does Taiwan claim ownership of China, it said, adding that Beijing’s interference in Taiwan’s relations with foreign countries through bullying and threats only repulses the international community.
Such rhetoric does not contribute to maintaining peace and stability in the region, and is causing cross-strait relations to deteriorate, it said.
Additional reporting by Yang Cheng-yu
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift