The Financial Times reported on Monday that U.S. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy will no longer be visiting Taipei to meet with senior government officials including Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, and would instead be meeting with Tsai in California. The report stated that Tsai persuaded McCarthy to make this change so as to avoid provoking China – which might respond to a McCarthy trip with military drills around Taiwan, as it did following then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in August 2022.
Pelosi was the first U.S. Speaker of the House to visit Taiwan in 25 years, with Newt Gingrich having visited in 1997. Following the Pelosi visit, China conducted live-fire exercises in the waters surrounding Taiwan.
