California lawmaker leads delegation to Taiwan amid already high U.S.-China tensions

Regardless of heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing over the current spy balloon downing , a U.S. congressional delegation led by California Rep. Ro Khanna plans to go to Taiwan this weekend, a transfer positive to be seen by China as a provocation.

Khanna (D-Fremont) and a gaggle of Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been headed to Taiwan Friday night time, aides accustomed to planning for the journey instructed The Instances. They plan to fulfill with the president of Taiwan in a mission “to bolster ties between Silicon Valley and the Taiwanese semiconductor business,” Khanna’s workplace stated.

China considers Taiwan to be a renegade province that must be compelled again into the communist fold.

Many Taiwanese favor independence. The island presently enjoys a big diploma of self-rule, with a comparatively democratic authorities and shut ties to Washington and different Western nations.

“I stay up for studying extra about Taiwan’s semiconductor business and the financial ties between Taiwan and my district of Silicon Valley,” Khanna stated in a ready assertion earlier than the journey.

Taiwan is among the world’s leaders within the manufacturing of semi-conductors and Khanna stated its work “is important to my district.”

Beijing has lengthy considered any overtures to Taiwan by U.S. officers or different nations as a risk.

On Thursday, China imposed commerce and funding sanctions of main U.S. firms, together with Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, as punishment for promoting weapons to the island. The 2 firms are among the many suppliers in a $1.1 billion U.S. navy bundle for Taiwan, which receives most of its arms from Washington.

When then-Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) equally traveled to Taiwan in August, China reacted with distinctive fury. As a result of she was third in line to the presidency and a member of President Biden’s political get together, her actions have been seen by many in China as having extraordinary official which means and weight. (She was, nevertheless, not the primary speaker of the Home to go to Taiwan.)

China responded by dispatching warships into the Taiwan Strait and different waters surrounding the island, and fighter jets over the area that launched long-range missiles as a part of what China referred to as an “train.”

For the reason that Pelosi journey, a few lower-profile congressional delegations have made the identical trek however with much less response from Beijing.

State Division diplomats routinely warn Congress members of the sensitivities and potential fallout from any journey to Taiwan, however lawmakers have the ultimate say about whether or not to journey.

Administration officers have defended the precise of U.S. politicians to go to Taiwan and criticized Chinese language reactions.

“China shouldn’t use any go to as a pretext to accentuate its actions round Taiwan,” a senior State Division official stated Friday.

The timing of Khanna’s delegation is, however, particularly fraught.

On Feb. 4, off the coast of South Carolina, U.S. fighter jets shot down a large Chinese language balloon that had traversed the continental United States on what Washington maintains was a spy mission.

Within the days that adopted as anxiousness over Chinese language espionage skyrocketed, the U.S. shot down three extra “unidentified aerial objects” flying over the far-northern U.S. and Canada. The Biden administration now says the later three vessels have been in all probability benign and never Chinese language spy devices.

The incident led to a brand new low in relations between Washington and Beijing. The primary balloon prompted Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to cancel a important journey to the Chinese language capital for high-level conferences aimed toward starting to revive a working relationship between the 2 governments.

China in the meantime has responded with offended accusations.

“The overreaction by America — and its strikes to intensify the problem — have exacerbated the scenario” and “precipitated new wounds in China-U.S. relations,” Xu Xueyuan, the costs d’affaires on the Chinese language Embassy in Washington, wrote in an opinion column in Friday’s Washington Submit.

China maintained that the balloon, whose payload was stated to measure the size of three buses, was a climate instrument that strayed by accident into U.S. airspace.

The brand new Home speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), in the meantime, can be stated to be pondering of a go to to Taiwan. As extra Congress members of decrease rank make the journey, strain on him builds to grab the mantel of a trigger expensive to political conservatives.

Khanna can be a member of the brand new Home Choose Committee on China, which focuses on potential threats posed by the world’s second largest financial system, particularly for Taiwan.

Taiwan and China break up in 1949 after a civil battle. The U.S. has historically maintained a “One China” coverage, a intentionally ambiguous recognition of the Individuals’s Republic of China, with whom it has diplomatic relations, with out abandoning Taiwan’s declare to independence.

The U.S. has not formally acknowledged Taiwan as impartial. However Biden has thrown doubts over the One China coverage in current statements by expressing a willingness to defend Taiwan militarily if China have been to assault.

Khanna stated he hoped his go to, probably to be adopted by a visit to China, would possibly ease tensions.

“Whereas I’m there [in Taiwan], I additionally plan to affirm the One China coverage and clarify we wish to do all the things we are able to to discourage a navy battle,” he stated Friday.