WASHINGTON—The chairman of the House Select Committee on China said Saturday the United States must take seriously the threat posed to Taiwan, as Beijing launched military drills around the island in the aftermath of the Taiwanese president’s meetings with American lawmakers.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who attended the meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen in California last week, told The Associated Press that he plans to lead his committee in working to shore up the island government’s defenses, encouraging Congress to expedite military aid to Taiwan.
“I think it all just points to what is obvious,” Gallagher told the AP, arguing that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is intent on reunifying Taiwan with the mainland.
“We need to be moving heaven and earth to enhance our deterrence and denial posture, so that Xi Jinping concludes that he just can’t do it,” Gallagher said.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) conducted drills with warships and dozens of fighter jets around Taiwan on Saturday, the Taiwanese government said, in what was viewed as retaliation for the meeting between the U.S. lawmakers and the president of the self-ruled island democracy claimed by the CCP as part of its territory.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy hosted Tsai in a bipartisan session at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, with more than a dozen members of the U.S. House for what was the most sensitive stop during her transit through the United States.
The CCP’s response to Tsai’s transit through the United States has not, so far, been as intense as its reaction last year after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan.
While both McCarthy and Tsai spoke in measured remarks after the meeting about maintaining the status quo between their countries, which have no formal diplomatic ties, the daylong meeting enraged the CCP.
The Chinese military announced the start of three-day “combat readiness patrols” as a warning to Taiwanese who want to make the island’s de facto independence permanent.
Taiwan split with China in 1949 after a civil war, and the United States broke off official ties with Taiwan in 1979 while formally establishing diplomatic relations with the Chinese regime.
The United States acknowledges a “one China” policy in which Beijing lays claim to Taiwan, but it does not endorse the CCP’s claim to the island and remains Taiwan’s key provider of military and defense assistance.
The CCP says the island is obliged to rejoin the mainland, by force if necessary. Tsai and her government reject that and say only the island’s people can decide their future.
CCP officials condemned Tsai’s meetings with lawmakers and announced sanctions on two organizations that hosted her in the United States, but its immediate response so far has been less forceful than its reaction to Pelosi’s August trip to Taiwan.
The CCP had warned U.S. lawmakers not to join the meeting with Tsai, Gallagher said. And after the meeting, the CCP urged the United States off what it called a “wrong and dangerous road.”
Gallagher, who served as a U.S. Marine with tours in Iraq, said U.S. lawmakers will not be intimidated by the CCP.
“It’s an attempt to shift the ideological battle space and, again, an attempt to intimidate us, and make us feel like we’re changing the status quo and provoking them, when the opposite is true,” he said.
Gallagher said he wants Congress to work on stepping up its military commitments to Taiwan. He said the United States should be more quickly sending weapon systems to Taiwan for its defense.
One idea that arose from the meeting, he said, was for the United States to help Taiwan with technology to manufacture its own defense systems.
In 2022, the CCP responded in the aftermath of Pelosi’s visit with its largest live-fire drills in decades, including firing a missile over the island.
Chinese officials gave no indication whether the drills underway now might include a repeat of previous exercises with missiles fired into the sea, which disrupted shipping and airline flights.
