Taiwan: After the controversial visit of the United States House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in early August, a delegation of US lawmakers arrived in Taiwan on Sunday for a two-day trip.
During their visit to the Island, the delegation will meet President Tsai Ing-wen.
The continuous provocation of China’s claim over the Island has resulted in serious tension in the region, with mainland China propagating its military might near Taiwan.
Read: China furiously condemns Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan
China has long claimed sovereignty over the Island. Taiwan’s government rejects China’s claims and says the Island’s people should decide its future.
The de facto US embassy in Taipei said the delegation is being led by Senator Ed Markey, who is being accompanied by four House lawmakers on what it described as part of a larger visit to the Indo-Pacific region.
Taiwan’s presidential office said the group would meet Tsai on Monday morning.
Responding to the visit, China’s embassy in Washington said on Sunday that “members of the US Congress should act in consistence with the US government’s “One-China policy”, and argued the latest congressional visit “once again proves that the US does not want to see stability across the Taiwan Straits and has spared no effort to stir up a confrontation between the two sides and interfere in China’s internal affairs.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said that members of Congress have gone to Taiwan for decades and will continue to do so, adding that such visits were in accordance with the United States’ long-standing one-China policy.
Under that policy, the United States has official diplomatic relations with Beijing and not Taiwan. However, Washington does not take a position on whether Beijing has sovereignty over Taiwan and is bound under US law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself. – Agencies
