China expressed frustration Friday with Vice President Kamala Harris for meeting with Taiwanese Vice President William Lai.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian rebuked Harris’s announcement that she had a brief encounter with Lai while attending the inauguration of Honduras‘s new president, Xiomara Castro, on Thursday.
“There is no Taiwanese ‘vice president’ since Taiwan is a province of China. China always opposes all forms of official exchanges between the US and Taiwan,” Lijan said during a press conference Friday. “The US should abide by the one-China principle and stipulations in the three China-US joint communiques, take China’s position and concerns seriously, stop all forms of official interactions with Taiwan.”
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Harris told reporters that she discussed the “common interest” between the United States and Taiwan in the region and the Biden administration’s “root causes strategy,” which seeks to address the underlying factors in migrants fleeing parts of Central America to the U.S. by addressing economic and political problems in the region.
“The brief conversation that we had was really about a common interest in this part of the region and apparently Taiwan’s interest in our root causes strategy,” she said.
Honduras is one of 15 countries that officially recognize Taiwan as a nation. Though the island has its own independent government, China claims sovereignty over Taiwan as part of its “One China” policy, which has deterred most countries from establishing formalized diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The U.S. maintains close ties with Taiwan but does not officially recognize it as a nation, and the State Department says it enjoys a “robust unofficial relationship” with Taiwan.
Zhao suggested that Harris’s meeting with Lai, who has previously insisted that Taiwan is a sovereign state, could send the “wrong signals” to Taiwan’s independence forces.
The issue of Taiwan has been a point of friction between the U.S. and China, with Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Qin Gang recently saying that Taiwan was the “biggest tinderbox” between the two nations. He also noted that China would not rule out using military force to reunify with Taiwan because the prospect of military force serves as a deterrent.
“The Taiwan issue is the biggest tinderbox between China and the United States,” he told NPR. “If, you know the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the United States, you know, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in the military conflict.”
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President Joe Biden has previously suggested the U.S. would protect Taiwan if China invaded.
