U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that she hoped her trip to Taiwan would make it “unequivocally clear” that the United States has no intention of abandoning Taipei, just a day after she stoked the ire of China by becoming the highest-ranking American official in a quarter century to visit the self-ruled island.
Pelosi, who is second in the line of presidential succession, arrived in Taipei late Tuesday, defying a string of furious warnings from Beijing, which considers democratically ruled Taiwan to be an integral part of its territory that must be brought back into the fold, by force if necessary.
The California Democrat, a longtime China hawk, said in televised remarks with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen that the United States’ solidarity with the island is “crucial” now more than ever, as China ramps up its assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region and the bloody war in Ukraine raises fears of a global erosion of democratic values.