Taiwan’s foreign ministerwill meet with US officials for low-key diplomatic consultations

The White House will meet with senior Taiwanese officials in Washington next week, Reuters reported, citing the Financial Times. The meeting was intended to be private to avoid an angry reaction from Beijing at a time of rising tensions between Taipei and Beijing. The move is part of an effort by the US and Taiwan to avoid provoking China into private diplomatic talks.

Citing five unnamed people familiar with the matter, the FT reported that Taiwan’s foreign minister Joseph Wu and Wellington Koo, secretary general of the National Security Council, would lead the delegation, Meeting with White House Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer and Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

The report said Wu told reporters in Taipei that he could not comment or confirm this.

The previous administration avoided disclosing the existence of this long-standing diplomatic channel. However, the diplomatic access was disclosed two years ago when the Financial Times reported that Mr Wu led a Taiwanese delegation to meet US officials in Annapolis, Maryland.

The White House and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office declined to comment on the upcoming meeting.

The United States, like most countries, does not have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan but is its most important arms supplier and international backer, which has long angered Beijing. The U.S. Taiwan Relations Act says the United States needs to ensure that Taiwan is sufficiently capable of defending itself.

The talks come at a sensitive time in U.S.-China relations. After a high-altitude Chinese spy balloon crossed U.S. airspace for days and was shot down by a U.S. warplane on Feb. 4, Beijing’s tough response escalated tensions between the two sides despite the Biden administration’s attempts to play it down. U.S. Secretary of State Ken Blinken was forced to cancel a planned visit to Beijing because of the spy balloon crisis.

Recently, the Financial Times reported on February 17 that Michael Chase, deputy assistant secretary of defense for China affairs, had arrived in Taiwan for a visit, citing people familiar with the matter. He is probably the highest-ranking US defence policymaker to visit Taiwan in recent years.

In addition, a bipartisan delegation of Democratic and Republican lawmakers headed to Taiwan on February 18 to strengthen ties between Silicon Valley and the island’s semiconductor industry, led by Democratic Representative John Kana, a member of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition.

Frequent interactions between the US and Taiwan, at a time of continued tension in the still-mending US-China relationship, would provoke opposition and resentment from China.

In early August last year, the Communist Party staged lockdown war games around Taiwan to express anger at a visit to the island by Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the US House of Representatives. Since then, the Communist Party’s military activities near Taiwan have continued almost daily, heightening the threat to Taiwan and increasing U.S. concern about the Cross-Strait crisis.

In addition, Kevin McCarthy, the current speaker of the House of Representatives, has expressed an interest in visiting Taiwan sometime this year or next. If it goes ahead, it will irritate the Communist Party again.

In an attempt to ease tensions, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken sought a meeting with the head of the Communist Party’s Foreign Affairs Office, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. As a result, the two men were able to meet in Munich on Feb. 18, the first face-to-face communication between their top diplomats since the U.S. shot down a Chinese reconnaissance balloon.

Shortly after the meeting, Blinken tweeted: “Just met with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi. I condemned the intrusion of Chinese spy balloons and stressed that it should not happen again. I warned China not to provide material support to Russia. I also stressed the importance of keeping lines of communication open.”

Blinken later revealed in an interview that Wang Yi did not “apologize” for the spy balloon flying over the United States during the meeting.