US diplomat recall ‘a message to Beijing over poaching Taipei’s allies’
Pressuring countries to switch recognition ‘not consequence-free’, says head of America’s de facto embassy in Taipei
Washington was sending a message to Beijing that pressuring countries to cut diplomatic ties with Taipei will have consequences when it recalled three ambassadors last week, the US representative in Taiwan said on Thursday.
“We will tell the Chinese that picking off diplomatic partners of Taiwan is a source of great concern to the United States. We’ve been telling China as clearly as possible that these are not consequence-free actions,” James Moriarty said at an annual conference at the Global Taiwan Institute, a think tank in Washington, on Thursday.
Moriarty has been chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), Washington’s de facto embassy in Taipei, since 2016.
He described Beijing’s actions in recent years to end a diplomatic truce with Taipei as “troubling” and said mainland China’s efforts to unilaterally alter the status quo across the Taiwan Strait were harmful and did not contribute to regional stability.
