TAIPEI, Taiwan
United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan on Tuesday evening, defying a string of increasingly stark warnings and threats from China that have sent tensions between the world's two superpowers soaring.
Pelosi, second in line to the
presidency, is the highest-profile elected US official to visit Taiwan in 25
years and Beijing has made clear that it regards her presence as a major
provocation, setting the region on edge.
Live television images showed
the 82-year-old lawmaker, who flew on a US military aircraft into Taipei
Songshan Airport, being greeted on arrival by foreign minister Joseph Wu.
Pelosi is currently on a tour
of Asia and while neither she nor her office confirmed the Taipei visit,
multiple US and Taiwanese media outlets reported it was on the cards --
triggering days of anger from Beijing.
Chinese warplanes buzzed the
line dividing the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday shortly before the expected arrival
in Taipei of Pelosi for a visit that has pushed friction between
Washington and Beijing to a new level.
The Chinese leadership has
repeatedly warned against Pelosi, a long-time critic of Beijing, making a trip
to self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as its own.
In the latest rhetorical
salvo, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Tuesday that US politicians who
"play with fire" on the Taiwan issue will "come to no good
end".
The United States said on
Monday it would not be intimidated by what it called Chinese "sabre
rattling".
Most of Pelosi's planned
meetings, including with President Tsai Ing-wen, were scheduled for Wednesday,
a person familiar with her itinerary said.
Four sources said she was
scheduled on Wednesday afternoon to meet a group of activists who are outspoken
about China's human rights record.
Taiwan's foreign ministry said
it had no comment on reports of Pelosi's travel plans, while her office has
also kept silent.
On Tuesday night, Taiwan's
tallest building, Taipei 101, lit up with messages including: "Welcome to
Taiwan", "Speaker Pelosi", "Taiwan (heart) USA".
With tensions already high,
several Chinese warplanes flew close to the median line dividing the Taiwan
Strait on Tuesday morning, a source told Reuters.
Several Chinese warships have
also sailed near the unofficial dividing line since Monday, the source said.
The source said both Chinese
warships and aircraft "squeezed" the median line, an unusual move the
person described as "very provocative."
The Chinese aircraft
repeatedly conducted tactical moves of briefly "touching" the median
line and circling back to the other side of the strait while Taiwanese aircraft
were on standby nearby, the person said.
The Chinese planes left the
area in the afternoon but the ships remained, they said.
Neither side's aircraft
normally cross the median line.
Meanwhile four US warships,
including an aircraft carrier, were positioned in waters east of Taiwan on what
the US Navy called routine deployments.
The carrier USS Ronald Reagan
had transited the South China Sea and was currently in the Philippines Sea,
east of Taiwan and the Philippines and south of Japan, a US Navy official told
Reuters.
It was operating with a guided
missile cruiser, USS Antietam, and a destroyer, USS Higgins. The amphibious
assault ship USS Tripoli was also in the area.
Since last week, China's
People's Liberation Army has conducted various exercises, including live fire drills,
in the South China Sea, Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea, in a show of Chinese military
might.
China views visits by US
officials to Taiwan as sending an encouraging signal to the pro-independence
camp on the island.
Washington has no official
diplomatic relations with Taiwan but is bound by US law to provide the island
with the means to defend itself.
Russia - itself locked in
confrontation with the West over its invasion of Ukraine - also chimed in on
Pelosi's expected visit.
The Kremlin's foreign ministry
spokeswoman called it a "provocation" aimed at pressuring Beijing and
reiterated Russian support for Beijing's One China principle.
Earlier on Tuesday, Pelosi
visited Malaysia, having begun her Asia tour in Singapore on Monday. Her office
said she would also go to South Korea and Japan but made no mention of a Taiwan
visit.
The US Air Force plane that
flew Pelosi to Malaysia headed towards Borneo on Tuesday before turning north
to the Philippines, tracking website Flightradar24 showed on Tuesday. Reuters
could not establish if Pelosi was on flight SPAR19.
Taiwan's Defence Ministry said
it had a full grasp of military activities near Taiwan and that it would
dispatch forces appropriately in reaction to "enemy threats".
China's defence and foreign
ministries did not respond to requests for comment.
In the southeastern Chinese
city of Xiamen, which lies opposite Taiwan and has a large military presence,
residents reported sightings of armoured vehicles.
Chinese social media was abuzz
with both trepidation about potential conflict and patriotic fervour.
"Faced with reckless US
disregard of China's repeated and serious representations, any countermeasures
taken by the Chinese side will be justified and necessary, which is also the
right of any independent and sovereign country," Foreign ministry
spokesperson Hua Chunying told a daily briefing in Beijing.
During a phone call last
Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned US President Joe Biden that
Washington should abide by the one-China principle and "those who play
with fire will perish by it".
Biden told Xi that US policy
on Taiwan had not changed and that Washington strongly opposes unilateral
efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the
Taiwan Strait.
White House national security
spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday that Beijing's responses could include
firing missiles near Taiwan, large-scale air or naval activities, or further
"spurious legal claims" such as China's assertion that the Taiwan
Strait is not an international waterway.
"We will not take the
bait or engage in sabre-rattling. At the same time, we will not be
intimidated," Kirby said.
Beijing considers Taiwan to be
part of its territory and has never renounced using force to bring the island
under its control. Taiwan rejects China's sovereignty claims and says only its
people can decide the island's future.
Accustomed to being caught in
the middle of China-US tensions, people in Taiwan expressed mixed views on a
Pelosi's visit.
"Regarding China's
statements or hateful comments, this has actually always been like that. So, we
look at it with peace of mind and are not overly scared," Yang Hsing-ruel,
a 22-year-old university student, said.
He expressed hope that the
visit would bolster ties between Taiwan and the United States.
Also on Tuesday, the website
of Taiwan's presidential office received an overseas cyber-attack and was at
one point malfunctioning, a source told Reuters. The website was shortly
afterward brought back online, the source said. - AFP
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