Beijing urges US not to let Taiwanese president transit ahead of Trump’s China visit

Beijing on Friday urged the United States not to allow Taiwan’s president to travel through US territory en route to the island’s diplomatic allies in the Pacific, a sensitive visit ahead of US President Donald Trump’s trip to China.

Beijing considers democratic Taiwan to be a wayward province ineligible for state-to-state relations and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.

The mainland regularly calls Taiwan the most sensitive and important issue between it and the United States, and Beijing always complains to Washington about transit stops by Taiwanese presidents.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen is expected to depart on Saturday for a week-long trip to three Pacific island allies – Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands – transiting via Honolulu and Guam.

The trip comes less than two weeks before Trump is due to visit China. The US president angered Beijing last December by taking a telephone call from Tsai soon after he won the election.

China had made “stern representations” to the US over the matter, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said, urging the United States to strictly abide by the “one China” policy.

China hopes the US did “not allow her to transit, not send any wrong signals to Taiwan independence forces and take real actions to protect the overall picture of China-US relations and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”, Geng said.

The trip to the United States will be Tsai’s second this year. In January she stopped over in Houston and San Francisco on her way to and from Latin America, visiting the headquarters of micro-messaging service Twitter, which is blocked in China, while in California.

In Houston, she met Republican US Senator Ted Cruz and Texas governor Greg Abbott. She also spoke by telephone with US Senator John McCain, head of the powerful Senate Committee on Armed Services.

Beijing suspects Tsai wants to push for the formal independence of Taiwan, a red line for Beijing. Tsai said she wanted to maintain peace with China, but would defend Taiwan’s democracy and security.

The mainland has heaped pressure on Taiwan since Tsai took office last year, suspending a regular dialogue mechanism and slowly peeling away its few remaining diplomatic allies.

Just 20 countries now maintain formal ties with Taiwan, mostly small states in Central America, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

The United States has no formal ties with Taiwan, but is bound by law to help it defend itself and is the island’s main source of arms.

Tsai’s call with Trump was the first between US and Taiwanese leaders since former US president Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan in 1979.