U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris vowed that the United States would “continue to support Taiwan's self-defense” amid an ongoing “pressure campaign” by China, during a visit Wednesday to the U.S. Navy's base in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, the largest overseas American naval installation in the world.
Harris, who was in Japan for the first leg of an Asia trip that will take her to South Korea from Thursday, lambasted China over its large-scale military exercises surrounding Taiwan last month, calling the drills and other moves “destabilizing” and noting that Washington did not expect Beijing to let up.
“We anticipate continued aggressive behavior from Beijing, as it attempts to unilaterally undermine the status quo,” she said, calling “peace and stability” in the Taiwan Strait “an essential feature of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”