Taiwan VP vows to stand firm amid pressure from China

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Taiwanese Vice President William Lai struck a defiant tone during a visit to the United States on Monday, vowing that the U.S.-backed island democracy won’t back down in the face of threats from China.

Taipei “will uphold the values of democracy and freedom,” Mr. Lai, the front-runner in Taiwan’s 2024 presidential election, said in remarks about rising Chinese threats to take control of the island, by military force if necessary.

“No matter how great the threat of authoritarianism is to Taiwan, we absolutely will not be scared nor cower,” he said during a speech in New York. His luncheon audience included Ingrid Larson, managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan, a U.S. government-run nonprofit that manages unofficial relations with Taiwan.

The Chinese ruling Communist Party has expressed outrage over Mr. Lai’s presence in the United States. U.S. and Taiwanese officials describe the short visit as a “transit stop” rather than an official state visit. Beijing says such visits should be forbidden.

“China firmly opposes any form of official interaction between the U.S. and the Taiwan region,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement over the weekend.

“China deplores and strongly condemns the US decision to arrange the so-called ‘stopover’ for Lai Ching-te,” said the ministry. It described the Taiwanese vice president as “a troublemaker through and through” who “clings stubbornly to the separatist position for ‘Taiwan independence.’”

The fact that U.S. officials allowed Mr. Lai to speak publicly in New York “seriously violates the one-China principle” and “gravely undermines China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the ministry said. It claimed that Washington is “bent on using Taiwan to contain China.”

The Taiwanese military said it is bracing for Chinese activity after Mr. Lai’s visit. The Taiwanese National Defense Ministry recently posted a notice on social media stating that China had announced plans for “targeted exercises.” The notice said Taiwanese forces would closely monitor the situation around the Taiwan Strait.

“In recent years, the [National Defense Ministry] has reported PLA aircraft and vessels intruding upon the areas around the Taiwan Strait, undermining peace and stability in the region,” the ministry said on Aug. 11. “Cognitive warfare tactics also have been deployed to influence the public,” said the statement, spreading misinformation to complement the military threat.

The confrontational rhetoric underscored the wider sensitivity of the Taiwan issue for China, which has increased military drills around Taiwan since Nancy Pelosi visited the island democracy last year. As House speaker, Mrs. Pelosi was the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the island in a quarter century.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin emphasized during a press conference in Beijing on Monday that “there is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory.”

President Biden has countered China’s increased military drills by sending U.S. warships through the Taiwan Strait. He has vowed that U.S. forces will respond militarily if China attacks Taiwan.

The White House has also made clear that Mr. Biden is committed to the “One China” policy. The U.S. has long acknowledged Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China but maintains informal relations and substantial defense ties with the island’s democratic government.

Mr. Lai, a former mayor of Taipei, is a focus of particular suspicion in Beijing. He once described himself as a “practical worker for Taiwan independence.” He has moderated his tone as the 2024 vote approaches and says he would accept the status quo regarding Taiwan and be willing to hold talks with China if elected.

He has also pledged to preserve Taiwan’s sovereignty and says only the people of Taiwan can decide the island’s future. China and Taiwan, he says, are “not subordinate to each other.”

Friction over Taiwan coincides with wider tension in the U.S.-China relationship, which has plunged to its lowest level in years after Washington’s shoot-down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that traversed the U.S. homeland earlier this year.

Mr. Biden has sought to dial down the tensions in recent months by dispatching Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other senior aides to China for fence-mending talks. The State Department recently invited Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Washington for more discussions.

Mr. Lai’s visit to the U.S. and China’s claim in recent days to have captured a person on suspicion of spying for the CIA have thrown the status of the dialogue into question. A week earlier, U.S. authorities arrested two U.S. Navy sailors on accusations of providing military secrets to China.

A looming battle

Although Mr. Lai is not visiting Washington on his current trip, key lawmakers on Monday heaped praise on the Taiwanese vice president and Taiwan in general.

“We welcome Taiwanese Vice President William Lai to the United States, as we had the pleasure of meeting him last April during our travels to Taiwan,” said a joint statement by Michael McCaul, Texas Republican and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Young Kim, California Republican and chair of the panel’s Indo-Pacific subcommittee.

“It is important that the United States and its allies stand with Taiwan by expanding our economic and defense relationship to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the lawmakers added.

The Taiwanese vice president met with supporters in New York en route to Paraguay to reinforce relations with Taipei’s last diplomatic partner in South America. China is stepping up efforts to isolate the self-ruled island democracy.

Mr. Lai will attend the inauguration of the next president of Paraguay. The tiny nation is one of only 13 countries maintaining formal ties with Chinese-claimed Taiwan. Beijing is accused of using bribes and its economic clout to persuade countries not to engage in diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Mr. Lai is slated to stop in San Francisco on his return from Paraguay this week. Taipei and Washington say the stopovers are routine, but the Chinese government has broadly attacked Mr. Lai as part of what U.S. national security sources say is a mounting effort to meddle in Taiwan’s presidential contest in January.

Chinese meddling in Taiwan

Mr. Lai is a member of independence-leaning President Tsai Ing-wen’s Democratic Progressive Party and is considered even more outspoken on the issue of independence than Ms. Tsai, who is stepping down after two four-year terms in Taipei.

Chinese officials are engaged in a campaign to “manipulate [the election] in their favor,” said David Sauer, a retired CIA officer who served in multiple overseas command positions in East Asia and South Asia.

Beijing will expand its operation with “a combination of information warfare, military intimidation, political and economic manipulation,” Mr. Sauer said during a recent appearance on “The Washington Brief,” a monthly virtual forum hosted by The Washington Times Foundation.

He said China’s strategy is to “hollow out Taiwan from within” and “create chaos” around the election to seat a president who will push the island toward unification with the communist mainland.

So far, China has shown few signs of large-scale military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. The official PLA website listed no exercises near Taiwan, and the most recent entry referred to “strategic drills” with Russian forces in late July.

The Taiwan National Defense Ministry said Monday in a Twitter post that six PLA aircraft and six naval vessels were detected around Taiwan and were monitored by Taiwanese warplanes, warships and land-based missile systems. When Beijing sends a political signal, it usually dispatches 30 or more warplanes and more than a dozen warships around Taiwan.

Chinese media have portrayed Mr. Lai as bent on pushing for total Taiwanese independence from China.

An editorial circulated late last month by China’s official Xinhua News Agency stated: “It is a reasonable presumption that once in office, [Mr. Lai] would seize every opportunity to push de jure independence and take risks to challenge the one-China principle and the one-China policy that Washington has long adopted. Thus the Taiwan Strait will likely slip into the abyss of military confrontation.”

Beijing has signaled that it is trying to undermine the DPP ahead of the January election and promote the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party, which held power in Taiwan before Ms. Tsai took office and has advocated for closer economic and diplomatic ties with Beijing.

The KMT is rallying behind Hou Yu-ih, a former director general of the Taiwan National Police Agency, and Chinese officials have been openly courting former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT, who visited Beijing in March.

• Bill Gertz contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.