A group of US lawmakers held a rare publicly disclosed meeting with Taiwan’s top defense official, a discussion that risks spurring China to step up its military intimidation of the democracy.
The delegation led by Ami Bera, a Democratic representative from California, met with Defense Minister Wellington Koo on Tuesday in Taipei, Taiwan’s Military News Agency reported.
Koo said Taiwan was a reliable partner for the US and was committed to strengthening its defensive capabilities, the report on Wednesday added. US President Donald Trump suggested while campaigning that Taipei increase its military spending.
The meeting adds to events lately that Beijing is likely to perceive as provocative. On Tuesday, Beijing hit back at Taiwan for joining a yearslong US campaign to curtail China’s technological ascent when it recently blacklisted the country’s AI and chipmaking champions.
And Bera and the other lawmakers met President Lai Ching-te on Monday. While such meetings are fairly common for US lawmakers, they still annoy Beijing because it opposes nations it has ties with from having official contact with Taiwan.
China will also note that military officials from Taiwan attended exercises at a key US military base in Alaska last week. Also last week, retired military officials from Taiwan, Japan and the US reportedly attended a simulated “tabletop exercise” in Taipei.
A new round of Chinese exercises around Taiwan soon cannot be ruled out, said Lin Po-chou, assistant research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a government-affiliated think tank based in Taipei.
“China might also escalate the scale of the existing provocation of Taiwan, or express dissatisfaction through propaganda warfare or commentary in official media outlets,” he added.
China views the archipelago of 23 million people as territory that must come under its control eventually, hopefully by peaceful means but by force if necessary. The People’s Liberation Army has held an unprecedented amount of exercises around Taiwan since Lai took office a little more than a year ago. It has also flexed its naval might around Japan and also Australia.
The latest developments come as China-US tensions cooled following trade talks in London last week. Taipei is also holding discussions with Washington to avoid getting hit with duties.
While previous American delegations are likely to have had meetings with Taiwanese defense ministers, they usually aren’t publicly disclosed. In 2021, a group visited the Defense Ministry in Taipei and was briefed on China’s military threats. Reports at the time didn’t say what Taiwanese military officials the lawmakers met.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Jack Chen, director of Formosa Defense Vision, an advocacy group, said the announcement of the meeting between Koo and the US visitors “showed that the military exchanges and cooperation between the US and Taiwan are becoming increasingly high profile and transparent, aligning with a long-term trend that began under the Biden administration and has continued into the Trump administration.”
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
