House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is slated to meet with Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Wednesday. The speaker’s previous plans to travel to Taiwan to meet with Tsai were downgraded, at least temporarily, in response to worries that Beijing would take such a trip as a pretext to intensify its harassment of Taiwan. But as the California meeting approaches, Chinese state entities have been previewing how Beijing will use it as a pretext to throw a tantrum resembling its response to then-speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan last year.
The Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda arms whipped into action in recent days, as Tsai made a stop in New York City on her way to Central America. Her first leg through the U.S. ended on Friday, and she’s currently wrapping up a swing through Guatemala and Belize, before heading to Los Angeles this week.
The English-language edition of the party’s Global Times newspaper said that a naval “flotilla” comprising two destroyers and a frigate with the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command performed exercises in the East China Sea while fighter jets carried out drills above. One person billed as “a Chinese mainland military expert” was quoted by the propaganda outlet as saying that “if Tsai does meet McCarthy, the PLA will resolutely respond similarly to when then U.S. house speaker Nancy Pelosi provocatively visited the island of Taiwan in August 2022.”
Meanwhile, the Global Times’ Hu Xijing, known among international audiences for his aggressive Twitter presence, relayed a threat on that platform: “The Chinese mainland will definitely react, and make the Tsai Ing-wen regime lose much more than what they can gain from this meeting.”
All of this follows threats from various Chinese government offices, such as Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, which said last week that it opposes Tsai’s plans to meet McCarthy and “will definitely take measures to respond.”
McCarthy is a China hawk who appears to have no qualms about drawing the CCP’s ire. But the Taiwanese government reportedly weighed in against his travel plans early into his speakership, expressing concerns about the Chinese government’s response to a trip, the Financial Times reported.
After Pelosi’s visit, the PLA began a days-long exercise involving flights into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone, naval drills, and, importantly, missile launches. One of the missiles landed in waters just off a Japanese island.
Bloomberg reported last week that because Tsai has decided to keep a low profile during the U.S. portions of her trip, the Biden administration believes Beijing’s response will be less intense than initially feared. One step taken in an attempt to defuse the situation, Bloomberg’s sources told the outlet, is the cancellation of a speech that Tsai was supposed to give at the Reagan Library. Instead, McCarthy will lead a bipartisan group of lawmakers to meet Tsai during her stop there on Wednesday.