US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement on Thursday of the latest visit by a top-level US official to Taiwan has irked China with Beijing calling it “extremely wrong”.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had announced earlier that Kelly Craft, the US ambassador to the UN, would soon travel to the island, calling it “a reliable partner and vibrant democracy that has flourished despite CCP (Chinese Communist Party) efforts to undermine its great success”.
“Taiwan shows what a free China could achieve,” he added.
Pompeo announced the trip by Kelly Craft condemning the mass arrests of 53 democracy activists – including former lawmakers and an American lawyer – in Hong Kong.
He said the arrests were an “outrage and a reminder of the Chinese Communist Party’s contempt for its own people and the rule of law”. Pompeo said Washington would consider sanctions and other restrictions on those involved in the crackdown.
Later, Beijing decried what state-run Xinhua described as “any form of official ties between the United States and China’s Taiwan region.”
Taiwan affairs spokesperson Zhu Fenglian branded the visit “extremely wrong,” Xinhua reported, and said it violates the “One China” principle and three China-US joint communiques.
Beijing says Taiwan is an inviolable part of China to be reclaimed, by force if necessary.
The statement did not say when Craft would travel to the self-ruled island. She will be the third senior US official to go to Taiwan after undersecretary of state Keith Krach in September and Health and Human Rights Secretary Alex Azar’s trip in August.