HONOLULU — On a two-day visit to Hawaii, Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te met with the state’s governor and congressional representatives as part of a Pacific island tour that has already triggered criticism from Beijing.
On Sunday, China’s Foreign Ministry said it “strongly condemned” U.S. support for Lai’s visit and had lodged a complaint with the U.S. It also denounced a newly announced U.S. weapons sale to Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as its own territory.
“China will closely monitor the situation’s development, and take resolute and forceful measures to safeguard the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said the statement.
Hawaii was Lai’s first stop on a weeklong voyage that will later take him to the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau. They account for three of the 12 countries Taipei has formal diplomatic relations with.
Hawaii’s Gov. Josh Green on Saturday hosted Lai at the state’s emergency management agency where they discussed disaster preparedness. Green, who was a longtime emergency room physician before becoming governor, posted on social media that he and Lai discussed how their experiences in health care informed their governance. Lai is also a physician by training and obtained a Master of Public Health degree from Harvard University.
“Together, we extended a warm aloha to Lai and his delegation, highlighting Hawai’i’s shared values of resilience and collaboration with Taiwan,” Green said in an Instagram post.
Lai also visited Bishop Museum, Hawaii’s leading museum of natural history and Native Hawaiian culture.
In the evening, Lai posed for photos with Hawaii congressional representatives and state lawmakers at a dinner banquet with the Taiwanese American community.
U.S. Rep. Ed Case, a Democrat who represents Honolulu in Congress, said on social media that he told the audience that “our ties endured on shared values and interests to advance mutual goals and meet shared challenges.”
It is unclear whether Lai with meet with any senior officials from the Biden administration or anyone from the incoming Trump administration during his Hawaii stay.
President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg in July that Taiwan should pay for its defense. The island has purchased billions of dollars of defense weaponry from the U.S.
Trump evaded answering whether he would defend the island from Chinese military action.
The new arms announced by the U.S. State Department Friday include $385 million in spare parts and equipment for a fleet of F-16s, as well as support for tactical communication system to Taiwan.
The U.S. is obligated to help the island defend itself under the Taiwan Relations Act but maintains a position of strategic ambiguity over whether it would ever get involved if Taiwan were to be invaded by China.
Former Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen drew vocal opposition from China when she stopped in New York last year on her way to Latin America. Tsai met with former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the time.
The Chinese military also launched drills around Taiwan last year as a “stern warning” over what it called collusion between “separatists and foreign forces” days after Lai, then Taiwan’s vice president, stopped over in the U.S.
China also strongly objects to leading American politicians visiting the island as it views any official contact with foreign governments and Taiwan as an infringement on its claims of sovereignty over Taiwan. Washington switched its formal recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
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