Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te returned home Friday after an almost weeklong — and politically sensitive — trip to Paraguay and the United States that experts view as a foreign policy success for the self-ruled island.
Although Lai’s political rivals criticized the low profile of his stopovers in New York and San Francisco, experts say the trip achieved its main goals: boosting the presidential candidate’s visibility at home and abroad while avoiding situations that could give Beijing an excuse to overreact.
While in the United States, the 63-year-old chairman of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party gave speeches to the Taiwanese community and met officials from the American Institute in Taiwan, Washington’s de facto embassy in Taipei.