Taiwan is warning its allies not to be fooled about China's modest response to the meeting of its president, Tsai Ing-wen, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in California on Wednesday.
Tsai's visit with McCarthy was the highest-level political meeting a Taiwanese president has held while on U.S. soil, and Taiwan said Beijing is working to subtly undermine Taipei without sparking a broader conflict, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and seven other lawmakers arrived in Taipei on Thursday and is expected to meet with Tsai after she returns from a 10-day overseas trip.
Immediately following a visit to Taiwan by McCarthy's predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., last year, China performed live-fire military exercises, missile launches, and a mock blockade of Taiwan.
After Tsai's visit with McCarthy, China's Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. during a regular press briefing Thursday of using the visit as a pretext to encourage pro-independence forces in Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a part of China, the Journal reported.
Maritime authorities in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian said Wednesday they were planning a special three-day patrol operation that could include boarding ships found in the Taiwan Strait that separates China's mainland from Taiwan, The Taiwan News reported.
Taiwan's Maritime and Port Bureau said it notified ship crews that if they encounter any requests by China's coast guard to conduct "boardings and inspections" they should reject them and notify Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration for protection and to handle the matter.
Taiwan Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng also said the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong is about 200 nautical miles off the east coast of Taiwan. He added that a U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, is about 400 nautical miles away.
"It would not be in Beijing's strategic interest to use egregiously escalatory military action in retaliation," said Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist who teaches about Taiwan at Australian National University in Canberra, the Journal reported.
He suggested Beijing would be better off to use "paramilitary-like assets," such as the sea patrols, which are less likely to escalate toward a conflict.
He said a forceful military response would also make it awkward for Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is playing host to French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Beijing.
"Repairing ties with Europe has clearly been one of China's principal foreign policy objectives this year," he said, according to the Journal.
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