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US-China relations
ChinaDiplomacy

Biden to send US delegation to Taiwan for inauguration of William Lai

  • US commonly sends representatives to the ceremony, but Lai’s ascension to Taiwanese presidency on May 20 comes during unusually tense relations with China
  • Group of former US officials is to include Brian Deese, Biden’s former top economic adviser, and Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state under George W. Bush

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William Lai Ching-te’s inauguration as Taiwanese president on May 20 will include a US delegation sent by US President Joe Biden. File photo: Facebook
Robert Delaneyin Washington
US President Joe Biden will dispatch a delegation of former government officials to the inauguration ceremony for Taiwanese president-elect William Lai Ching-te next week, a senior administration official said, in a show of support for the candidate and political party that has sparked the ire of Beijing.

The delegation is to include Brian Deese, Biden’s former top economic adviser, and Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state under former president George W. Bush, according to the official, who framed the plan as “a long-standing precedent” and consistent with Washington’s one-China policy.

It will be the Biden administration’s second delegation to Taiwan since the election. He dispatched one led by former Bush national security adviser Stephen Hadley and James Steinberg, a former deputy secretary of state in the Barack Obama administration, to Taipei two days after Lai was elected in January to show support for the self-governing island’s democratic process.
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In 2016, then-president Obama sent John Negroponte, deputy secretary of state under George W. Bush, for the inauguration of Tsai’s first term as president. Negroponte led the delegation with former US trade representative Ron Kirk. Raymond Burghardt, then chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) – the de facto US embassy on the island – also attended, among others.

The coming term of Lai, of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), follows more than eight years after current President Tsai Ing-wen first came to power, ushering in an era of higher tensions across the Taiwan Strait.

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William Lai wins Taiwan presidential election

William Lai wins Taiwan presidential election

The Biden official explained that “intensified diplomacy” between Washington and Beijing over the past year had been aimed at “clearing up misperceptions [and] being clear about the US one-China policy – what that means and what it does not mean”.

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